Ripping yarns from gricers

Never got to drive anything on the main line but thanks to a driver mate, I spent a day on the Bromley North branch plus cups of tea in the mess room, a cab ride out of Charing Cross around North Kent and after he changed depots, a lift home from Kings Cross to Arlesey in the cab of a 317. Sadly by the time he’d graduated onto the top link and was driving ECML expresses, such jollies were strengst verboten.

 

Now, with the advent of cctv, onboard monitoring, it wouldn't happen, Drivers would be on the carpet for allowing a non-approved person into their cab, and then there's the question of PTS, As a foot note, about 6 months after this, I did apply for a driving job with SWT, sat the assessment, passed that with flying colours, had an interview with the section training manager, again passed with flying colours, then at the medical, I was asked if I suffered any physical disability, I was truthful and said, yes i have a stammer, but i control it, very well, and i then got a rejection notice, by now, my friend, was one of the main trainers, asked how i got on, he was dumbfounded, said, i will have a word , see if I can change their mind, but it seemed I was deemed to be a safety risk

 

Great story and fabulous photo of a loco from a wonderful class of steam locos. And even loooking at the B & W photo I can instantly tell that it is in BR black lined livery!

 

That seems like discrimination. I'm no expert, but surely there is a law against that now? There must be a way of dealing with a stammer in employment, without denying the employment completely.

 

It’s become a jobswoth’s world now, in the 60s I’m sure at least the middle management got involved themselves, an example is how I came to join Bahamas Loco Society. My trips to the North West involved the overnight Euston - Manchester where I would be met by my northern friend for a day’s gricing finishing up at Stockport where I bunked the shed before returning south. On one occasion I was collared by the Shedmaster, Terry Smith, who asked to see my permit. I told him I hadn’t got one and I’d spoken to him before and he hadn’t asked to see it. He explained that I now needed one that would cost me ten Bob (50p) and I would have to fill in a form. He sat me down in his office handing me an application form to join the Society telling me that if I showed my membership card I would be welcome anytime! The loco was still stored in the back of the shed at the time awaiting towing to Crewe for scrap, I think various stories about hot boxes were fed back to put off the Crewe management while the funds to purchase were acquired. On subsequent visits no one ever asked to see my membership card.

 

Since the Equalities Act 2010, the language of “reasonable adjustment” has come in. But employers remain able to impose specific requirements where they’re necessary for the job. Given the protocols about safety critical communication, I think they’d be able to argue that a stammer would reasonably be a problem for the role.

 

John, re middle management got involved. As the end of SR steam approached some/most loco inspectors (not middle management, but a step up), knew full well that quite a few drivers were giving us gricers the experience of what it was like to ride on the footplate of a steam loco before they were gone for ever - as it seemed they would back than. Unwritten rules were that such rides were not to be done in and out of Waterloo (SR regional head office overlooked the platforms), and care had to be taken passing signal boxes in daylight too. So many of the rides were away from London and at night.

Bryan

 

The same reason we couldn't go all the way to Carlisle I'm sure.

 

That's unfortunate but the selection process seems to be a lot tougher now. As a member of support crew I had to take the PTS course with a refresher every couple of years and at my age an annual medical that does pay a lot of attention to sight and hearing. They very strict on communication, we have to know the NATO phonetic alphabet and know the protocol of announcing who you are and of repeating back all received communications to ensure there is no misunderstanding.

 

Fair comment. But when RAIB have just released a report which refers to a driver “freezing”, I’d have sympathy with an employer that erred on the side of caution when deciding whether a condition that expresses under stress should be allowed. As @Johnb observes, communications are increasingly important - again, RAIB have issued a number of reports where communication failure has been a key factor in the incident.

It’s the same principle that saw the armed forces refuse to recruit anyone with any hint of asthma in their medical history. Under pressure, there were cases of people with asthma in their history, seemingly cured, then coming out and them being unable to do their job.

I’ve every sympathy for those who lose out because of that, but the ability to do the role has to be paramount. Just as happened with me when my attempts at joining the RAF in a flying role got stopped dead by my legs being too long - I couldn’t have ejected safely.

 

As a follow up to my previous story, here's a couple of rather poor pictures I took at Appleby, the two I took on the journey at 1/60th second were as expected bin jobs. How did we manage back then with 50ISO film? The first is as we reversed into the yard with the unique 44767 appearing on the up line with a short freight, the second includes 70045 that was already there with a single wagon and brake returning to Carlisle. There was no crew on the Brit when we arrived, they appeared shortly afterwards having gone for a pint in the Midland Hotel, an instant sacking offence today! I don't know where 44767 was heading but it was in Kirkby Stephen yard when we passed on our way back.

 

That's a question I often ask myself, thinking back to the days of Ilford Pan F, FP4 and HP4... yet somehow, we did.

 

Like a few others on here, I experienced a a different railway world back in the 1970's. Unofficial visits to signal box when still at school helped acceptance onto the railway and to know what I was joining. A couple of us on here are certain that the local Station Master said words in the right places that we would be useful additions to the workforce.

I joined a steam age railway with bound ledger books in goods offices, daily pick up freights and minor stations manned until late at night. In my first few years at work, we were told to go and meet the local staff in our area on spare shifts . There was the unspoken comment to get involved. Thus I rode many miles in brakevans on pick up freights, tried my hand at shunting and worked a number of signal boxes. I also learnt to look carefully before stepping off the bottom step, not the 3rd rail but china clay slurry or fuel oil drippings in oil sidings. Then there were aspects of a local railway, never mentioned in any manual or text book. It was prudent not to deliver van loads of Sugar Beet Pulp Nuts to a particular station on Thursdays. That was market day in the livestock market across the road from the station. The cattle could smell the nuts and would get rather boisterous trying to get to them and occasionally did escape.....

About the time I left Train Planning at Paddington (2007) , the manager who signed off a training trip to visit boxes in Anglia was puzzled why I chose three mechanical boxes. All had oddities like tokenless block or different forms of train describer or pure absolute block with a ground frame in mid section. Such detail which was beyond his knowledge. Why didn't I want to visit Colchester or Cambridge panels? Somewhere in the NR archives is a report on train planners going out to connect with ground level staff. By 2015 I had to get written permission from Route Management and the Local Operations Managers involved to take trainee possession planners into signal boxes.

Cheers, Neil

PS I did teach the trainees planners the protocol of bringing a packet of shortbread fingers or chocolate digestives when visiting any location like a small signal box.....

 

By 67 they were all at Kingmoor with very little work to do, this sort of working was hardly what they were designed for. It was the same on the Southern with the Bulleids, I remember talking to a driver at Bournemouth who was taking a West Country off shed to do the Blandford shunt as it was known (The old S&D was freight only up to Blandford Forum by then). He was cursing about it saying, 'give me a Black Motor with a steam reverser any day, I'll be suffering from w**ker's wrist by the time I knock off today.'

 

One cab ride once. I used to know a bloke who was a guard on the Manchester - Bury electric line and one night a week back in the early 80s I had to go to St Johns College in Manchester after work for some insurance qualification night school. I would get to Victoria at about 8 ish and this time, the guard I knew saw me and invited me into the brake compartment. It was some time late in the year, December 81, from memory, and dark. On the 504 units, the motor brake car faced Bury, and as soon as we set off from Victoria, the driver shouted me to come in the cab and take the secondmans seat, he was a really friendly and interesting man, he had started on steam and also drove DMUs. I rode at the front to my stop at Radcliffe, which is the next to last station before the end of the line at Bury.

 

I can't compete with the ripping yarns already related here; the best I can manage is helping operate Queensville Signal Box, just south of Stafford a couple of times in the early 1970s. A group of us somehow got to know a chap who worked on the railway, and looking back, I'm pretty sure his intentions towards youngish lads was less than honourable, thought to me at the time, he just seemed a little 'odd'. He (falsely) claimed that he was the well known railway photographer M. Mensing, which even then seemed rather far fetched, but hard to disprove. He also had quite an extensive N gauge railway we helped him build and operate and in return he paid for a few railway trips, including to The Bluebell line (I recall the train having to wait for a stray cow on the line to be rounded up ), and Steamtown, Carnforth, where a footplate ride on the B1 Mayflower sticks in the mind. But the highlight was definitely a couple of evening turns in Queensville box. I was for ever jealous of my brother who in addition to helping in that box also had a visit to Stafford No. 1, at the junction of the Wolverhampton line and the main line, though he did say that it was so complex he couldn't even begin to understand what was going on. It wasn't many years later that both boxes bit the dust, so definitely an unrepeatable experience...

 

Way back in the summer of 1964 whilst on holiday in North Wales I was 'spotting' with a couple of friends at Llandudno Junction.
We got talking to a loco crew who were based there and they promised us a footplate ride the following day on a Manchester to Holyhead train which they were booked to work.
We were told the loco would either be a Black 5 or a Britannia! We turned up at the junction the next day and met up with the crew.
The train came in behind Jubilee No 45653 'Barham'. The driver told us we could ride on the footplate from Conway onwards and could ride as far as Bangor!
What a wonderful experience, I was even allowed to handle the Regulator! We rode in the train to Holyhead and the crew were booked to work a train back to the junction after a break. The driver told us to come up to the front at Bangor and we could ride back with them from there. This time the loco was an EE Type 4 (class 40). The Sickening bit is the same train the following day was hauled by Duchess No. 46251 'City of Nottingham'!
Ah well, you can't win 'em all, at least I did manage a mainline footplate ride on a Duchess - but I had to wait another 21 years to get it!