We were all lads between 14 and 16 years and all tear-a-ways which meant that the ‘charge hand’ had a difficult job keeping us all in line.
In the cleaning shed there would be 2 gangs on each shift. The boys would be split up into gangs and there would be about 4 lads to an engine. Things were very strict in the cleaning shed as they would have to be, with young lads in amongst all that heavy engineering, in fact the charge hand would send you home if you were caught eating your lunch on a footplate.
I remember one event, I was booked onto an afternoon boiler washing turn, one of the jobs you used to get when you were cleaning. My mate came over to me and said, “go over and have a look at the small turntable”, which was at the end of a straight road. So I walked over there and there was this little tank engine on its side in the pit with the turntable turned around.
One of the cleaning lads on the previous shift decided to have a go at driving and had started this engine up. It started forward and he didn’t know how to stop it going which meant the engine fell into the pit turning on its side. It was still going when Foreman Fiitter turned up. A crew with heavy lifting gear took two days to get the engine out of the pit, needless to say the young lad got the sack and never became an engine driver.