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You can in the town where they are published. When I lived in Glasgow in the early 70s, i would buy the Scottish versions of any daily I wanted from about 10.30 pm the night before. Especially the Scottish Daily Record.

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If you're going to have a diesel there is very little nicer to listen to than a well-thrashed Napier Deltic. I've always loved the sound of two-stroke diesels, having been brought up within earshot of

Railways are very dangerous places to work if you are in movements. This was brought home in 1992 when we lost a good friend just doing his job. Gary was a young fellow with a lovely wife and

Wish I could get two inches! - (I've always wanted to be 6 foot).

If I remember rightly, the paper train contract finished when the Sun decided to start sending papers by road. As it was not practical to send some papers by road and others by rail, all the papers started going by road.

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Railways are very dangerous places to work if you are in movements. This was brought home in 1992 when we lost a good friend just doing his job.

Gary was a young fellow with a lovely wife and a little lad. He was good to work with. A good shunter. He pulled his weight and usually worked very safely. We were sad to see him go when he transferred to the Railway Research department across the main line near London Road, Derby.

It was a good job for him. Two of them working together 8am til 4pm, preparing special research trains to go places all over the system. Occasionally there was a couple of hours overtime for one of them to come in early to couple an engine to an early departure prepared the day before. A break test, inform the signalman, watch the train right away and feet up with a cuppa til his mate arrived at 8am. As his mate was single and didn't need it, Gary usually got the overtime and as a family man was grateful for the extra money.

On that fateful morning, Gary had come in at 6 am to couple an engine to a train that was due out at around 6:40am. One man was all that was needed for such a job. However, when he got there, he found that a train had come in early and been just reversed into the adjacent siding and fouling the one where the special train was. He knew that the engine for the special could be couple to the train that was foul and push it into the sidings clear. He also knew that, owing to the curvature of the track in that siding, it was strictly a TWO MAN job to shunt it back. He was also aware of the importance of the special train and the need to get it onto its booked path.

Gary couple the engine to the train, walked around it but had to stand on the mainline to signal to the driver who would on the offside of the cab. While the driver was crossing the cab, Gary would cross the line to the rear of the train where he would be in sight of the driver once he rounded the curve in the track. The driver was soon worried because he could not see Gary as he moved the train in reverse down the line. He stopped the train and got out to look for him and soon found him minus one of his limbs. It seemed that Gary had slipped on the wet ballast at that back of the train and fell across the track and had not got up in time. In those days before everyone had mobile phones, the driver had to nip across the main line to Etches Park to phone for an ambulance.

When the ambulance arrived, they found the gate locked and no-one around to open it. Gary died from loss of blood even after the gallant efforts of the ambulance men.

I was on holiday that week but everyone who could attended his funeral at Derby Crematorium where they were standing 3 deep round the walls. At the sight of his widow sobbing quietly on the front seat with a very bewildered little lad sat next to her there was not a dry eye in the place. It is something I will never forget.

The warning is clear. Fully trained and experienced railwaymen still get killed or seriously injured working in moving railway traffic. Trespassers have absolutely no chance. Pratt around on working railway lines at your own risk. You deserve all you get for ignoring the warnings.

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Thanks for that Stephen. As a child I was like the rest of my mates, taking short cuts across the Trowel Line. The old steam trains never approached quietly, but one day we were shocked to see a DMU approaching with very little noise. If my mum knew I had been the wrong side of the fence I would have had a good wallop and been grounded for a month. But it truly came home to me when I started working in moving railway traffic. Our training was long and tedious and ongoing. A rule Book, General Appendix, Sectional appendix and weekly notices plus mandatory courses kept us up to date with working practices. I soon learned that your responsibilities are huge, and you never let your concentration drop for one second. That's all it takes. One second and in a sidings it's all at low speed. Did you know we were encouraged to keep an eye on your mates like they would you. Silly little things can maim. Like the night shift that had been very busy and we were all tired at the end of the shift. My last job was to prepare a train standing in shed 5 at Etches Park. After coupling the engine, I had to walk round and check the outside of the train. As the train was on a raised track, I then had to climb in using special steps and make sure all was OK, check the fire extinguishers etc. The last job was to jump out at the rear, take the air brake pipe off its hanger and drop the tap to make sure the air was going all the way through the braking system Remember that the pressure is 72PSI which is quite powerful, you should hold the pipe to stop it springing up. That day I was absolutely done in and forgot to hold it. It sprang up very quickly but fortunately the only damage was to my glasses. I was centimetres from losing an eye. And all my fault.

You learn very quickly from that kind of experience.

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Working on the old 'nuts and bolts' railway was more interesting than todays modern systems. Little things like the local trips that came in the sidings at Nottingham twice a week with the rail mounted oil tanks. They were stored on the back line (number 23 road) on the loco side of things. This meant hurriedly getting the carriage shunt 08 loco and clearing anything in the way and then fetching the empties out. They would be shoved down an empty carriage road while the trip engine shoved the full ones down the back line. One of us would uncouple the engine and pin the brakes down on the tanks, then supervise picking up the empties on the trip working. Then it would be right away probably to Macintyre's scrapyard at Beeston before taking the empties to Toton. Meanwhile one of the fitters would connect the pipe to the tank trucks so the static diesel tanks could be replenished.

A couple of years later the tank trip finished and the tanks would be dumped somewhere in London Road Bottom Yard. We had to fetch them ourselves when we had time.

When I transferred to Derby in 1985 there was a similar system. Except that the bulk of the tanks were shunted down a road at the back of the New Sidings (the old 4 shed roads) to replenish the huge static tanks used for fueling main line engines and HST power cars. Another 3 or 4 would then be taken round into Etches Park and shoved down the tank dock next to shed 8 where they would be used to fill smaller static tanks for DMU fueling on 18 road.

Fueling DMUs was a great ritual usually during early evenings. It involved one shunter, one driver and one fueler. Pretty straight forward until one day, the driver thought he heard the instruction to move forward (which he didn't) and moved on with the pipe still attached. The pipe was wrapped around one of the brick supports to the concrete shelter and the movement fetched it down, the concrete roof just missing the fueler. God could he swear!

Another day we were busy fueling when someone said 'Can you smell petrol?' Unfortunately, one of the rail mounted tanks contained petrol instead of diesel. Need I say more? So much to go wrong.

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Lifting drop-head buck-eye couplings was something else. The LNER had buck-eye (or automatic) couplings on their carriages for years while everyone else had screw couplings. Buck-eyes were much safer in many ways. They were more or less universally introduced when the Mark 1 coaches were built. As it says on the tin drop-heads were able to be dropped to liberate the draw hook which the screw coupling on a locomotive could be thrown over. To couple two carriages together safely, the buck-eye coupling was lifted and the support pin inserted (not forgetting to spin the tail-pieces). Then of the two buck-eye couplings, one was opened by pulling the opening chain, the other left closed, unless the coupling was done on a curve in which case both couplings had to be opened. The carriage attached to the engine was firmly push against the other and you could hear a sharp click as the securing lever dropped. To make sure this had happened you did a 'pull test'. That is, use the engine to test they were couple correctly. Then it was time to couple the brake pipes. Usually vacuum on m\ark 1 coaches but later air brakes were also fitted. Steam heating was the norm on early mark 1 coaches, but gradually electric train heating (ETH) cables were fitted on most of them. Steam heat was good even in diesel days as most early diesels were fitted with heating boilers. Trouble was, travellers had a habit of 'borrowing' the heavy brass coupling heads when the carriages were stored in the sidings.

When mark 2 coaches were introduced, the early ones - mark 2a and 2b were fitted with dual brakes and in some cases dual heating, but the later ones were all air brake and all electric heating as they were fitted with air-conditioning. When HSTs were built, unlike the new mark III loco hauled coaches, their mark III coaches had fixed buck-eye couplings.

Big problems? forgetting to pull test the coupling and then connecting up the ETH cables. If the carriages parted, the cables snapped. Whoops!! Big trouble and usually a form 1.

The drop head buck-eye couplings weighed a hundred weight. Just lifting them was nigh on impossible. You had to swing them up and ram that support pin home quickly before it got too heavy. It was an acquired knack.

When I mentioned 'nuts and bolts' railway work, that is what I meant. Heavy work but REAL railway work. Team work combined with rule book knowledge and local knowledge. You don't know how good it was until after its gone. Happy days.

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I remember the 'buck-eye' coupling being introduced in the 1950s when they caused a revision in the shunting practice of 'buffering up' and holding the contact to help the shunter to screw up the coupling. As Bb says with the buckeye the driver had to allow the engine to bounce off to test the connection.

I had 2 spells in the 'carriage shunt' link, the 6 drivers for health reasons were permanent with the fireman booked in for 5-6 months working a shift pattern over a 48 hour period. The two allocated engines were class 2p 4-4-0s and the first shift around 5am. would prepare & take the engine to the sidings, be relieved about 12noon, 7 pm, 2am (the next day), 9am(nice day job) 4pm who would return the engine to the shed at midnight to start the cycle again. The job could be boring particularly for the fireman so it was the norm. to change 'sides' at snaptime and do half each, you certainly learned the station layout and working with the ground staff, Frank, Harry Townrow, Alf & Wisher the foreman and after my time Bilbroborn. Nice memories.

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Proper railway work was very labour intensive, but it was skilled and you knew you had a job. Very interesting and always something new. We shunted with 08 class engines or 'Jockos' as we used to called them. I loved riding down the rough lines of the sidings on the front step, especially located for shunting staff to ride on. The 08s had a header tank for diesel which was hand-pumped by the driver. We shunters often did it for him. We often pulled the strings under the coaches to isolate the automatic brakes and then loose shunt them for quickness. If we were caught it was a form 1. I don't know why but all sidings sloped down to the buffers. If you lost a loose braked carriage, it just ran away. You just stood and waited for the almighty CRASH!!. It was pointless chasing them. It was then a phone call to Toton for the rail mounted crane.

Vacuum brakes would stay operable forever unless someone pulled the strings. Air brakes were different. They often leaked off and ran away. That was why we usually used a wooden scotch under the wheels when storing them. Bad news if you didn't check for one when you came to move the carriage. Always a derailment.

Many parcels coaches were dual braked. To change from one to the other you had to isolate the brakes and then use a locomotive to activate whichever other brakes you were to use. You had to keep your wits about you when making a parcels train up from scratch. If you got one wrong, you had binding brakes and then wheel flats. You could hear wheel flats coming a mile away. Bump, bump, bump. I remember a mail train coming into platform 1 at Derby one night. It had several binding brakes, glowing red hot wheels and smoke everywhere. One of the parcels vans contained boxes of cabbages and we had to shunt the van onto platform 6 and transship the lot to another parcels van. We didn't half stink of cabbage after that little lot.

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Rule book knowledge was paramount when working in moving traffic, from knowing hand signals to understanding the rules about moving trains within station limits. Your own personal safety was your responsibility, but you always looked out for your mates.

Local knowledge was important too. There were 16 carriage storage lines at Nottingham Carriage sidings when I worked there. You had to know exactly how many coaches you could get inside clear of all other lines. And to complicate things, Mark 2 coaches were a tiny bit longer than mark ones. On numbers three and four sidings, which both held 11 carriages, this made a lot of difference. At Nottingham all the storage sidings were dead ends. It was different at Derby Etches Park where many were open ended. So you had to check clearance at both ends. Also knowing where the curvature is too tight to couple two carriages.

At London Road Low-Level yard, many of the points and signals were controlled by the signalman at Goods Yard Box. And some were hand points. Most of the signals were semaphore ground signals (sub-signals) with a circular disc. There were instances where there were 2 or 3 on top of each other then you had to know which signal applied to which line. And at night there was the hand lamp signal given to the signalman to tell him that the points were fitting up ok and he could authorise the movement. This signal meant twisting your handlamp showing a white aspect above your head. It was complicated work but it was a great job.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Britain's railways were still largely a nationalised industry when I started. Typical of the public sector overstaffed. As a cleaner, we had three trains each to clean with long breaks in between, and an hours head-down at the end in a preheated first class compartment. This was at Nottingham carriage sidings in the 1970s. Even when I was promoted to Senior Railman carriage shunting, it was not what you would call busy. I was put on an intense shunting course with an experienced shunter, then tested on my knowledge by a station chief inspector. After that, it was just shunting incoming trains off the reception lines into wherever they would spend the night. On days, maybe making trains into correct formation. We had two trains which went to Glasgow and back each weekday. One went via the WCML which had 100MPH max speed lines. The other went via the Settle and Carlisle and only travelled 90MPH max. We had 90MPH coaches and 100MPH coaches which had to be in the correct trains.

Later, I transferred to Derby Etches Park where it was busier but still an easy job. Then in the 90s the railways were de-nationalised and life gradually became busier. Modern DMUs were being introduced. These coupled automatically and did away with coupling cables and pipes by hand as on the old Derby and Swindon sets - also Cravens.

Every weekday at Derby, a trip would run north/south then south/north delivering coaching stock in need of repair to Darlington, York, Crewe and Swindon carriage works. For some reason they always had to return to the works where they were built. This could be very busy sometimes, especially if a rake of refurbished stock was delivered.

Back to modern units. When coupling two together, they had to be briskly buffered up and then given a pull test. Then the driver would push the couple button. Simple? Not always. If the electrical connection was faulty, they would not get power and therefore would not be going anywhere. Cue for the driver to get a dose of Tourettes.

The prototypes were hell. If the doors didn't close, there was no power. Sometimes, a driver would stop at a signal and the doors would come open and refuse to close. I've seen big tough drivers close to tears when this happened.

Happy days.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Carriage cleaning in Nottingham Carriage Sidings was a weird experience in the 1970s/80s. To clean the outsides we had two buckets. One contained clean water and the other a solution of a white powder called ex-mover. What chemicals were in there we never knew (no cossh then), but a lot of railwaymen who owned caravans were always knicking some. We were also equipped woth a long handled brush. The process was to wash the sides with a good rubbing of ex-mover solution, then after a small section of the coach side, wash it off with clean water, also using the brush as we only had one hose-pipe between us. When it was really mucky we poured an additional liquid into the bucket which I was told called 'Special Stuff'. It turned out to be Hydrogen Peroxide. No wonder our hands were as white as snow, even though we wore rubber gloves. The brass door handles used to go black because of the fumes from the council incinerator.

When I progressed to insides, it was easier, and the beautiful wooden paneling on those Mark 1 Fks and BFKs (First class corridors and Brake First class corridors) used to come up beautiful with a good polish. Vacuuming was a chore. One had to plug into sockets on posts on the walkways (modern carriages have sockets in them). Trouble was they kept tripping and the trip-switches were on the outer side of number 7 sidings so if you were working on numbers 3 4 5 or 6 you had to climb through the trains to reset. And as they were only vacuumed monthly, the dust was horrendous. Modern trains are now vacuumed several times a week.

My last job on the cleaning side before I was promoted to carriage shunting was tanking. This involved dragging a hose pipe from coach to coach to fill the roof tanks with water for flushing and washing. Luckily there were taps every fifty yards or so along the walkways. Too bad when they froze up in winter. Another part of that job was to replenish the supplies in the toilets - that horrible waxy Izal loo roll and those little rectangular bars of Palmolive soap. Also paper towels and new towel rolls in the Towel-masters in the first class carriages.

I mentioned earlier some of the codes for different sorts of coaches. We had to know some of these as cleaners but full knowledge was mandatory as a shunter. The letter K was used to denote 'compartment'. Thus FK was first compartment. SK was Second Compartment. BFK was Brake First Compartment and BSK was Brake Second Compartment. CK was Composite Compartment - First and Second in one carriage. BCK was the same but with a small Brake compartment. Most second class carriages were 64 seaters even the open plan (SOs). The Tourist open plan had slightly more. Every item of rolling stock had a code for use with the first primitive computer system we used on the railway which was abbreviated to TOPS. I think things these days are a lot more refined.

Despite all the rubbish equipment we had to use compared with today, I loved every minute of it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

For you train buffs, you might enjoy this video that was sent to me. It was taken in Arthur's Pass, B.C.

http://safeshare.tv/w/DYEsPODBwX

Katyjay, are you sure it is in B.C. (British Columbia)? I think it is South Island, New Zealand. Its a great video.

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At Etches Park Derby, we had to stable the trains in such a way as anything foul did not foul the roads of first trains out. In my last years there we had about 15 class 170 units and between 8 and 12 HSTs. The 170s were marked up for which service they would depart on and we stabled them accordingly. These units mostly went out on the stopping trains. The HSTs would be on the fast trains. 18 sidings was where we fuelled the 170s and this would take from early evening until about midnight. When that was done we would put them on 15, 16, and 17 roads. You could only get 1 two car unit clear both ends on 17 and 18 sidings. We would get the service set up, perhaps getting some of the earlier units up to the station if we had enough drivers available. Then the first HST out would be stabled on 18 sidings foul of both ends, but it did not matter as it would be out of the way before any of the units were due out.

Except.......................

Ring Ring........ Hello Etches Park.......................Hello this is control. We need to swap some of the 170s around to different jobs..............................!!!@@@@!!!!

So. We would shunt the HST onto the machine wash sidings out of the way and do the swaps then put the HST back. And it was winge winge moan moan from the poor drivers.

Fortunately this didn't happen very often.

One morning, the driver came for the HST on number 18 sidings. He did his checks and then whistled up for right away to the station. I'd phone the power box...........Hello Bobby 5C22 (or whatever) ready for the station. Sub-signal 461 came off. A green light and off he went.

What we didn't know was the vibrations changed the 17/18 sidings points under the train at the bottom end. The front end of the HST came out of 18 sidings but the rear end went along 17 sidings. As they were close together, the air brake pipes didn't part therefore stopping the train. Instead, it demolished the four lampposts on the walk-way between the two sidings. What a bloody racket. Fortunately there was no one on the walk-way otherwise they would have been in trouble. These things happen very rarely but it is pretty scary when it does.

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