When I was a driver at Old Oak, I had a letter to go in and see Mr. Simms the head foreman and he said to me “I want you to go to Paddington” he said, “here’s the note to read”. It was about an incident at Reading that had happened years before and I said, “I can’t remember anything at Reading” and Mr. Simms said, “you’ve got to go and meet the barrister at Paddington” he said, “don’t come here, go straight to Paddington and you’ll meet the driver you were with there”.
The driver’s name was Dick Haynes and the incident we had to go to Paddington about had involved a lineman who had walked out from under the East box at Reading, straight into the path of train. As it happened we were starting away from one of the platforms and they must have worked out from the diagrams that we were at Paddington at the time of the accident and they wanted to know if we had witnessed the incident or blew our whistle.
When we met the barrister it turned out that his father was a Swindon driver.
I had a driver called Fred Cope, and he was the craziest driver you could ever wish to meet. For instance at Chepstow bridge which had a speed limit of 15 mph back then, Fred used to ‘shut off’ at a place called Beachley loop and run over the bridge at speed, and I tell you what, it was frightening the first time you went over there with him.
I mean, you’re talking about a passenger or mail train with thirteen or fourteen coaches pulling behind. The other side of the bridge had a speed restriction of about 40 mph down through the cutting, but Fred was opening it up going down there.
We would run down from there and he would say “we’ll have water at Gloucester today”, but he could never stop the train exactly where he wanted it, and we ended up going on to the trough’s at Megan, with the water was getting low by then, I can tell you.
I can remember walking up [Swindon] town with my wife and she said, “is that a driver?”, ‘cos he had all sorts of things sticking out of every pocket of this old coat he was wearing and my wife said, “no, never in all my world is he a driver” and I said, “he’s my driver, never mind about any other driver”, he was as crazy as they come.
From Old Oak we used to go to Raddley Bridge and have about 2 to 2 1/2 hours in London. At Raddley Bridge there was a woman in there whose name was Ginger. She was one that if the engine was ‘blowing off’ too much steam, she’d come out and start shouting at you and off course if you was there you could torment her like and she’d say “there’s no need of that you know” and then start arguing, especially with Wolverhampton men.
On one occasion we were in there, there were two sets of Cardiff men, Taunton men and Wolverhampton men. She loved the Wolverhampton men and there is no question about it they worked hard. We were all going off the shift within a half hour and congregated ready to go out, and the Wolverhampton men, you wouldn’t believe it today, but they wore ‘clogs’ and apparently they worked on a contract basis working a train for so many days.
These Wolverhampton men when they were preparing their loco’ would build up a really good fire, smoke and steam, because that would really torment that woman.
Now these Wolverhampton men used to make tea. They had a square piece of grease proof paper with the corners gathered up and twisted, with tea leaves and condensed milk inside. When they came into the cabin they dropped this into the can, filled the can with boiling water, and swirled it around a bit and then tip it out.
I reckon that that’s where the design for tea bags came from. They made their tea like that long, long before I ever saw a tea bag and they all used to make tea the same way.
When I was in Carmarthen I was with Di Winblow who was a bit deaf. We were on a car that we went from Pencader to Newcastle Emlyn, you see the Aberystwyth line, when you got to Pencader, there was another branch went to Newcastle Emlyn and when you got to Lampeter, there was another branch went to Aberaeron.
We were on a car, which is like an auto-car, the engine one end and the driver in a cab the other end. The fireman was on the loco’ on his own, but the driver had control of the brake but only to put it on, he couldn’t take the brake off, but he could control it.
On those branches they had open crossings, then, and you had two whistle boards. If you could picture it, there were miles and miles of nothing except sheep and gorse up the mountains, nothing else. A road would wind itself across the landscape and you would see nothing on it for a week at a time. As we came up to the crossing we would slow down to about 3 miles an hour, go over the crossing blowing the whistle at the two whistle boards.
Anyhow, we go over and a Post Office van’s coming. Di blows the whistle, blows it again, then I blow the whistle and it stops and we start to go, the Post Office van driver must have thought, ‘oh, I’ve got time to get across’, but he didn’t, and we hit him with the buffers.
At the inquiry they said that Di had to have a medical and they found he was deafer than he had said he was, so from then on he was put on a pilot for the rest of his time.
When I was on the ‘pilots’ at East Depot during the war the bombing started. My driver, he said “well, I’m off home”, he said “I’m not leaving my wife and family” and I was there on my own until he came back in the morning. Mind, the work stopped when there was bombing, but we had to look after the engines.
So the work had stopped but he wasn’t going to leave his wife and two young boys. A ‘loco’ was made of quite thick metal, so shrapnel that used to come down like rain, you were protected in the cab of a ‘loco’ and it was reasonable warm because you had sheets up. I tended to stay on a ‘loco’ rather than go to an air raid shelter.
When we used to go down to Neath, on the triangle a loco would come on the back end of our train, pull us around the triangle so we could get our coal, for Carmarthen and Fishguard. I always had one of those 72’s on that route.
When we were coming along from Llanelly we were right along side the sea, and where the sand blew through the gates shore-side it would bring us to a standstill.
This meant that someone had to get down and shovel the sand out the way, even though sacking was put on the gates to try and stop this happening. Where the sand blew over the sea wall of course the sand would go over the rail to the other side, it was only the gates that caused a problem of sand about a foot high. A big loco’ could plough through but by the time half of the carriages had passed it slowed you right down.
When I came up from Carmarthen, at Carmarthen you worked to Fishguard, Nayland, Pembroke Dock, Cardiff and to Swansea, we also worked on the Aberystwyth line. Anyway, the first 20 miles out of Carmarthen was all uphill to a place called Pencader. You had to stop for water at a place call Conwell, but you were working hard for the first 19 miles.
When I came to Swindon, I was only spare for a while. One day I went with a driver (Jack Woodwards) on the Old Town pilot, and he said “now we’ve got a terrific bank to go up so be ready for it won’t you”. So of course I am, I gets the tank ready, only a small one mind you. So I gets on the engine and gets a great nice big fire going, now from here (Swindon yard) to Old Town is only two spits, but I was ready for a bank of 20 miles. When we get to Old Town I says to Jack “when are we getting to the bank?” and he said, “we are there”, I said, “Christ, I’m ready for another 20 miles, the engines blowing its head off, I’ve got a bloody great fire in there”.
You can’t cool down a fire like that, ‘cause I got a boiler full of water, ready for a bank like I had in Wales! And I said to Jack “Christ, this is not a bank, what am I supposed to do?”
So we had to go all the way back down with the engine, which normally would have been our breakfast time, to Rushey, so that the engine could blow itself off and use some of the water so’s we could keep it quiet. The next day, all I needed was a little bit of fire in the engine with hardly any water in the boiler, and up to Old Town I could keep the engine quiet. You see, I was new and didn’t know where I was and could only rely on what Jack told me and when he said “there’s a hell of a bank to go up”, to me it was nothing.
In Wales there were so many people working at the depot with the same name, like David John Thomas, there was about six in Carmarthen and about the same number of D. J. Jones as well as Evan Evans that we used to give then nick names.
My mate was called ‘Evan Cappel’, because he lived next door to the chapel. There was one bloke call ‘Jack Round Bob’ because he liked to make a shilling. Another one was called ‘Willa Bont’, now ‘bont’ in English means ‘over the bridge’, so Willa Bont lived over the bridge.
Now there was a driver called ‘Caws Caled’, which in English is ‘hard cheese’. Apparently he was up to Cardiff in the war, and his fireman said, “cor, jees I’m bloody starving” and he offered to sell his fi eman a piece of hard cheese for two pence and from there on in he was called ‘Caws Caled’.
You had all kinds of names like that and I was at one time a fireman to a driver called ‘Di Winblow’, now he should have been retired, as on the GWR you retired at 60. But during the war they rescinded this so you could go on until you were 65. Now he went on till he was 65 and then had too finish, which he hated.
Why they called him ‘Di Winblow’ was because nearly every depot had what were called ‘smoking concerts’, where all the drivers and firemen went to a pub where they would get up and sing, play an instrument or whatever. Old Di would get up and always sing ‘Oh how the wind blows cold!’ and from there on in he was called ‘Di Winblow’ although his real name was D. J. Evans.
There was another chap call ‘Di Amon’ because he couldn’t say ‘salmon’. Now at Carmarthen on the Tyni, it was a big thing to catch salmon, poaching and that was one of the little things done on the side. We all had a ‘coracle’ for a bit of salmon fishing.