During the war, about 1941, I booked on at 1.45pm on a Sunday afternoon to work on the station ‘pilot’ shunting wagons about the station. There was a goods train going from Swindon to Bristol who’s driver didn’t have knowledge of the road, so the foreman fetched me and my driver off what we were doing to take this train to Bristol.
We got to the siding at Bath and the air raid sirens started. The bombing lasted for about 2 hours, and when it was over we eventually got in to Bristol at a place called Dr. Day’s siding when the sirens started again. The bombers came over that night and really ‘blitzed’ Bristol, it was one of the worst nights that Bristol experienced in the war.
I ended up under the signal box with my driver and the signalman, sitting in the toilet. The all clear went at about 1.00 am in the early morning but about a half-hour later the sirens went again. This time the bombing raid blew the line up about 200 yards in front of our train with a 60 foot length of track ending up against the signal post, and again behind the train, so we were trapped where we were with incendiaries burning all around. The glass had been blown out of the signal box and engine and we were still sat under the signal box in the toilet shaking.
The engine was a tank engine, a big 72 class as I remember, and eventually the ‘all clear’ sounded. As we looked out from under the signal box we saw a group of kids up on the gas tanks kicking the incendiaries down, an extremely dangerous thing to do.
A little time later we got relief and I got back home at 10.45 Monday morning, from 2.30 the previous Sunday afternoon.
From that time on I always had a fit of shaking whenever the air raid sirens started.
The first ‘fire and turn’ that I did was on the ‘locy’ yard on an afternoon turn where we used to prepare 4 trains and we were backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards all day keeping the fire up and the steam pressure up, until I ended up feeling sick. There was only me and an experienced driver and he decided when you were ready for the footplate. To become a passenger fireman you had to be passed by an inspector.
I was made a Fireman in 1940 and it was 1947 when I got made a passenger Fireman. I was made a driver in 1955.