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Stations, Junctions, etc
Engine Sheds
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London North Western Railway Engine Sheds
Select a station or subheading to view associated images.
Numbers in [brackets] specify the number of photos on each page.
The following is an extract from one of Reg Kimber's
scrapbooks compiled over 50 years.
Extract from the biography of JM Dunn reflecting on his
long career associated with sheds of the LNWR and BR
NUNEATON AND COVENTRY
Nuneaton Shed
My first day at Nuneaton was the 25th April 1939 and I
started off with a month's training for the job of Running Shift Foreman which
involved getting acquainted with all the goings-on on the three different
shifts throughout the 24 hours and endeavouring to acquire the running shift
foreman's "outlook". Nuneaton Shed had 8 roads each 250 feet long and had been
built in or about 1878 to hold 12 engines. It had been enlarged twice, first in
1888 to hold 24 engines and again in 1897 to hold 34 although an official list
of 1904 gave its capacity as 40 based on 50 feet per engine. In 1939 the
allocation of engines was as follows:-
7 L.N.W. 5 ft. 6 in. 2-4-2 Tanks - 6636, 6657, 6658, 6660,
6749, 6741, 6680
7 L.M.S. 2-6-2 T.B. Tanks - 201, 204, 205, 206, 144, 203,
208
4 Mid. 0-6-0, 2F - 3084, 3161, 3489, 3649
4 Mid. 0-6-0 3F - 358I,
3679 376o, 3786
3 L.N.W. 0-6-0 18 in. goods - 8333, 8350, 8538
4 L.M.S.
0-6-0 Tanks - 7285, 7286, 7367, 7594
3 L. & Y. 0-6-0 - 12294, 12321,
12397
4 L.N.W. 0-6-2 18 in. Tanks - 6876, 6893, 6894, 6924
7 L.M.S. 2-6-0
- P.B. 2777, 2781, 2783, 2786, 2888 T.B. 2973, 2977
7 L.N.W. 0-8-0 G1 -
8911, 9191, 9344, 9345, 9346, 9350 9351
30 L.N.W. 0-8-0 G2 - 9181, 9264,
9268, 9270, 9271, 9276, 9318, 9342, 9352, 9366, 9397, 9398, 9399, 9400, 9404,
9423, 9428, 9429, 9430, 9431, 9432, 9433, 9434, 9435, 9436, 9437, 9438, 9439,
9450
Of these 80 engines the most interesting was No. 8333,
formerly L.N.W.R. No. 2365, which had been built at Crewe in June 1880, Works
No. 2379, and was not only the first of the celebrated 18 in. goods engines or
"Cauliflowers" but was also the very first locomotive to be fitted with Joy's
Valve Gear. It had a third distinction in that it was the first engine to bear
the L.N.W. heraldic device which was irreverently supposed to bear a
resemblance to the vegetable by whose name these machines were popularly
known.
The total staff was 376 which included 111 booked and 34
special sets of enginemen. The shed was equipped with a 60-ft. Mundt type
turntable by Ransome and Rapier, a mechanical coaling plant by Henry Lees &
Co., an ashfilling plant by R. Dempster & Sons and a Paterson Complete
Water Softener. The coaling plant was heavily overworked and had to handle more
coal than the plant at Rugby which was of a much larger and more robust design,
the average weekly figures for Nuneaton and Rugby being 1,134 tons and 997 tons
respectively. The result was that the coaling plant was frequently out of
action, though not always through its own fault, as it could scarcely be blamed
for loose boards from wagon bottoms- and even wagons themselves-falling into
the hopper! As can be imagined when the coaling plant failed and hand-coaling
had to be resorted to there was a very great difficulty in finding staff for
the job.
There were no machine tools of any description at Nuneaton
Shed. Although Nuneaton Shed catered chiefly for mineral traffic there was a
yearly event, the Leicester Holidays, in the early part of August for which
about fifty special passenger trains were run to Bangor, Barrow-in-Furness,
Blackpool, Bournemouth, Colwyn Bay, Cromer, Hastings, Eastbourne, Brighton,
Hunstanton, Lancaster, Llandudno, London, Lowestoft, Morecambe, Paignton,
Portsmouth, Prestatyn, Rhyl, Scarborough, Torquay and Yarmouth. For most of
these trains, excepting those going to the east coast, Nuneaton had to provide
engines and men for at least part of the journey.
I was recalled from holidays on the 25th August 1939 owing
to the international situation and took the place, pro-tem, of Mr. W. J. Legg
the Running Shed Foreman who had been promoted to Shrewsbury. All sorts of
warlike preparations were in hand such as the erection of barricades of
sandbags at strategic points and I had to go and buy all the permanganate of
potash I could find in Nuneaton to discolour and camouflage the sludge-ponds at
the water-softening plants there and at Hademore, between Tam worth and
Lichfield. On the 3rd September 1939 war was declared and on the 27th Mr.
Clews, the District Locomotive Superintendent at Rugby came over to tell me
that my old friend R. F. Tucker had been killed in a motor accident in France
on the previous Monday. Everybody was very upset about it and Mr. S. E. Park-
house, the Divisional Superintendent of Operation at Crewe, himself had the
unpleasant task of breaking the news to Tucker's mother. He was well liked by
everybody who came into contact with him.
On the 2nd October 1939 the new Running Shed Foreman, Mr. T.
T. Darlington, son of a former Mayor of Crewe, arrived and after a week of
showing him round I resumed my duties on the shifts although I relieved him
from time to time while he was away. On the 22 nd December following I took
over the post of Running Shed Foreman at Coventry vice D. C. I. Reynolds
instead of relieving A. E. Fairhead at Northampton as had originally been
considered. In the event, the latter was replaced by Shakespeare who had
recently been promoted from there to Shrewsbury but had not yet got a house, so
he was recalled, one of the most sensible moves I have ever known on the
railway. Both Fairhead and Reynolds eventually joined the ranks of the
lieutenant-colonels and returned to the railway service undamaged, receiving in
due course, the reward of their patriotism.
Coventry Shed
Coventry Shed which had been built in 1865-1866 to provide
accommodation for 4 engines, was extended soon after 1896 and had four roads
each 100 feet long. It was provided with a 42 ft. turntable
1 - L.M.S. 2-6-2 3 PT Parallel boiler) 103
5 - Mid. 0-6-0
2F 3010, 3518, 3571, 3691. 3726
2 - L.N.W. 0-6-2 18 in. Tanks 6890,
6924
2 - L.N.W. 0-6-0 18 in. Goods 8367, 8513
5 - L.N.W. 0-8-0 G1 8892,
8895, 8926, 9133, 9135, 9340
Later there were slight changes. There were 30 sets of men.
Mr. Clews of Rugby was appointed an assistant to the Super-intendent of Motive
Power at Watford Headquarters in June 1940 and was succeeded by Mr. S. T.
Clayton. In October heavy air-raids on Coventry started and it was the usual
all too familiar tale which need not be repeated, though perhaps I may mention
my experiences on the morning of Friday, the 15th November 1940 after the
heaviest raid of the lot, for all of which we have to thank the internal
combustion engine, the flying machine and the clever men who, as is usually the
case, were just not quite clever enough. Fortunately for me I had been unable
to obtain lodgings in Coventry and was travelling daily from and to my home at
Nuneaton.
On this particular morning the train was unable to go beyond
Longford owing to the line having been damaged and I had to walk all the way
from there to Coventry and through what was left of it to the station, which
was on the far side of the town. I got to the engine shed about n.o a.m. and
found the place deserted. Two coaches of a passenger train standing on the down
Leamington line opposite the shed were blown to pieces, the passengers
fortunately having got out a few minutes earlier. There was a string of about
half-a-dozen "dead" engines standing on one of the through roads at the station
where another bomb had dropped at the Rugby end of the up platform and brought
down about 15 yards of the platform roofing.
There was neither water nor electricity and as all the wires
had been brought down there was neither telegraphic nor telephonic
communication in any direction. A bomb had dropped in the yard at the
Birmingham end of the station and blown up about 50 wagons which were piled
high. The engine shed had escaped with nothing worse than a few broken windows
and I am thankful to be able to record that not a single member of the motive
power staff sustained even the slightest scratch.
On Tuesday, the 28th January 1941 I received a telephone
message from the Police Station asking my name as "someone" wanted to see me. I
gave my name and asked what was the matter but the only answer I got was a
chuckle and a remark that I'd soon find out! Not long after one of the staff
knocked on my office door and said a lady wanted to see me. My visitor was an
elderly- I might say "old"-well-educated but somewhat shabby-looking lady who
was very short of breath-so short, in fact, that it was about five minutes
before she could talk. I gave her a seat, told her to take her time and waited
with considerable curiosity for her to speak. When at last she did so she
talked for about ten minutes about her hospital experiences in the
War-to-End-Wars and said that her brother had been an Admiral in the Royal
Navy. Then she said that she believed the police had spoken to me about her,
that she had an "idea" and asked if I would tell her how much space there was
underneath a railway engine?! Well, I told her and said that if she liked to
take me into her confidence and say what her idea was, I might be able to help
her.
To cut a long story short she wanted to turn the
steam-"smoke" she called it-from the chimney into a perforated box underneath
the engine so that the exhaust would not be visible from enemy aircraft. I told
her that what she called "smoke" was 90 per cent steam and tried to explain as
well as I could why her idea was impracticable. It took some doing but I think
I eventually convinced her and she went away full of thanks and apologies. I
never heard any more of her.
Going to Coventry in the train on the 21st March 1941, a man
attempted to get out of the carriage on the wrong side at Foleshill and if I
hadn't grabbed him he would have landed on the rails in front of an engine
going towards Nuneaton. I reported the incident on arrival at Coventry and the
next morning the Station Master told me that acting on my information they had
caught two men doing the same thing that morning and handed them over to the
police.
After another air-raid on the 11 th April 1941 we suspected
that an unexploded bomb had fallen in the "six-foot" near the shed signal and
had buried itself under the track but there was little sign except that the
ballast appeared to have been disturbed. Anyhow it was quite enough for me and
as soon as telephonic communication had been restored I reported the matter to
the Regional Commissioner's office and asked them to send some bomb-disposers
to have a look at it. In a few hours time a couple of policemen came and
started prodding the ground with iron rods while I kept well out of the way but
they soon gave it up and went off. Nobody else appeared so I once more 'phoned
the Commissioner's Office and they replied that as it had been there for 48
hours without exploding they considered it was a "dud" and did not intend
taking any further action. I answered that it was bad enough having to work in
the place when bombs were falling without having to move engines over the top
of possibly "dud" bombs afterwards and that they could give my compliments to
the Regional Commissioner in person and tell him that I was not going either to
ask or allow any of my staff to take any engine anywhere near the spot until a
proper investigation had been made and that he could do what he liked about it.
In the meantime no engine was going to leave Coventry Shed.
An hour or so after that a lorry load of soldiers and beer
(which latter they well deserved!) arrived and they began to dig. After taking
up a section of the permanent way they eventually found the bomb at a depth of
about 12 feet right under the "four-foot". After they had successfully
performed the tricky feat of removing the fuse they tied a rope round the bomb
and fastened the other end to the drawbar of an engine which then moved ahead
and so pulled the "find" to the surface. The last I saw of the bomb was a
soldier sitting on it on the pavement of Quinton Road drinking a bottle of
beer!
On the 15th April 1941 Lord Stamp of Shortlands, the
President of the London Midland and Scottish Railway Company, his wife and son
were drowned when a dug-out in which they were sheltering at their home in Kent
was flooded through a water-main being bombed. Lord Stamp, I think, had the
distinction of being almost the only prominent figure in the British railway
world after whom no engine was ever named. A railway antiquity at Coventry was
the water-column at the Birmingham end of the down platform which had been made
by Bury, Curtis & Kennedy. It is now in the Museum of British Transport at
Clapham.
Back at Coventry on the 24th September 1941 I received
instructions concerning a special train of such a nature that I thought it best
to go myself to the homes of the men concerned to give them their instructions
instead of sending verbal or written messages. I accordingly set out on the
errand walking from one end of the town to the other and as it was a beautiful
but very hot day I was a bit footsore before I got back to the shed. The train
was W699, due to arrive at Coventry the next night and I had to be there to see
to things. The passenger was no other than Winston Churchill who was going to
spend the night in the train in a siding at Berkswell before visiting Coventry
the next day.
A certain locomotive inspector who shall be nameless had the
job of going to Berkswell with the train and seeing that all the arrangements
for stabling and heating it were properly carried out and during the time we
were awaiting its arrival at Coventry. I had the pleasure of witnessing as fine
an exhibition of the antics of what are often called by railwaymen "hard-hatted
swine" as one could wish for. First, Mr. Inspector bawled across the station to
the driver of an engine whose headlamp he considered was "dim". Then an engine
came round the corner from Leamington with a red headlamp and he chased and
roared after that. Next an engine arrived from Birmingham and began to
"blow-off" whereupon Mr. Inspector did likewise. After that another engine came
along en route for Berkswell and he wanted to know the why and the wherefore;
in his opinion, expressed at the top of his voice, it was q uite unnecessary
and so on. Shortly after that the special, W699, arrived five minutes before
time and with only one headlamd alight instead of two which occasioned another
outburst of song. I could hold my tongue no longer so told him that I thought
he'd had an exceedingly good bag and that when next he went to bed he ought to
be able to sleep with a clear conscience!
The train having departed with the vocalist on the
footplate I went to bed in "The Crow's Nest", the stone-built platelayers' hut
which my fitters had commandeered and made into exceedingly comfortable
quarters which I used whenever I had to spend the night at the shed. The
following morning in spite of all the "secrecy" and my efforts in that
connection, not only the platform but the station approach and streets as far
as one could see were packed tight with sightseers. Just before 10.0 a.m. when
the train was due to arrive I took up my position, away from the crowd, near
the man with the red flag at which point the engine was supposed to come to a
stand.
Presently the train came round the corner by No. 3 signal
box running, as it seemed to me, rather slowly and with steam shut off and then
when the engine was about half-way between Nos. 3 and 1 boxes she was suddenly
given steam and after uttering half-a- dozen sonorous puffs came to a dead
stand with a sort of dying gasp! The platform, of course, was full of
"big-wigs" of one sort or another from the Earl of Dudley down to the Mayor and
Mayoress of Coventry together with the local Home Guard and the usual L.M.S.
factotums. Everyone's eyes almost came out of their heads and I at once thought
to myself-"A vacuum failure!"-I picked up my heels and ran along the platform
as fast as I could go, ignoring the questions of "What's the matter?" and down
the line to the engine. The vocalist of the previous night was on the footplate
and I asked him what was wrong. He didn't know but the vacuum had suddenly gone
back ten inches, thus partially applying the brake and he'd told the driver to
drag the train into the station. Then they had seen the guard signalling them
to stop and they had done so. Having found there was nothing wrong with the
engine I walked on at a more leisurely pace along the train until I came to the
rear brake van from the window of which a bowler-hatted and blue- mackintoshed
individual put out his head and said "It's all right. We're waiting for time.
He hasn't finished his breakfast!" At that I said a few things, went back to
the engine and rode on it into the station where we arrived ten minutes late.
HE had still not finished his breakfast and the train stood for some minutes at
the platform before he got out. I suppose it was all part of the Churchillian
showmanship and in line with the other instance when, as his train was passing
through Nuneaton at a good speed he caused a full application of the brake to
be made so that the train stopped dead in almost its own length and he jumped
out shouting for a telephone on which, when he was taken to it, he booked two
seats for a London theatre!
The grimness of the National Emergency was occasionally
relieved by comic or semi-comic interludes, an example of which was provided by
one Foskett, a man of aristocratic appearance and demeanour, who was
station-master at Bedworth. When airraid warnings were received while trains
were in Bedworth station he would walk along the platform calling out-
"Bedworth-Air Raid-Bed'urth (in the vernacular)-Pull down the blinds-BEDWORTH
(in precise English)-Air-Raid- Bed'urth" and so on.
Mr. Foskett was fond of travelling over the remote railways
in Ireland with ordinary full-fare first-class tickets and leading the local
railwaymen to believe that he was a senior officer, if not a director! He did
not tell them that he was, in so many words, but behaved and passed remarks in
such a manner that such a conclusion was nearly inevitable. He never used free
or privilege tickets on these expeditions as they would, of course, have given
him away. The 21 st November 1941 saw me appointed Running Shed Foreman at
Coventry vice Reynolds who had been promoted in his absence to Sutton Oak. In
early June 1942 I was advised that I was going back to Nuneaton with the
temporary appointment of "chief" as Mr. Darlington was taking up another
temporary post at Rugby. Before leaving Coventry I must mention the excellent
work performed by the deputy Running Shed Foreman, Driver E. J. Watkin who
night after night, week after week, all through the period of the air-raids,
was in charge of Coventry engine shed during the dangerous night hours. He
never flinched from the job and when I left for Nuneaton I recommended him as
my successor. If ever any man earned an appointment he did and I am pleased to
say that soon afterwards he was given the post.
Nuneaton Shed
On 15th June 1942 I returned to Nuneaton Shed and the next
day Mr. F. W. Abraham, the Assistant Divisional Superintendent of Operation at
Crewe and chief of motive power matters on the Western Division came to see me
and among other things said that Nuneaton was a big job in ordinary times and
especially so now. I was not particularly enthusiastic at the prospects as my
appointment was only a temporary one and the man whose place I had taken was
only 17 miles away and in a position to criticise my actions. I knew from past
experience there were many things I should have to alter. At the end of the
month I saw Mr. Seaton of the Crewe Trains Office and he told me that Blaenavon
Shed was being closed as from 6th July 1942 the staff being transferred to
Chester and Birkenhead. C. H. Tait, the District Goods and Passenger Manager at
Swansea had said that this had nearly ruined his life's work which had been to
keep the Merthyr, Tredegar and Abergavenny line for the L.M.S. Seaton said that
J. W. Phillips the District Locomotive Superintendent at Shrewsbury had been
the main instigator of the closing.
On 3rd July 1942 I had a trip with Driver W. Brunt on Engine
No. 510 working the 5.0 p.m. "Ashby Milk" to have a look over the road. We went
via Shackerstone Junction, through Heather, Hugglescote and Charnwood Forest
Junction to Coalville and Ashby-de-la- Zouch and then on to Moira, Overseal,
Donisthorpe, Measham and Shackerstone back to Nuneaton. It was a continuous run
without any "running-round" and we got back to our starting point at 8.0 p.m.
after a very pleasant trip chiefly over lines long closed to passenger traffic
except for the length between Coalville and Moira.On 21st September 1942 I
harangued the Leading Fitter and his staff about the vacuum brake reservoir on
Engine No. 9431 having been reported fifty times before it was put right.
Engine repairs were not the only problem I had to tackle as all the clerical
work was in a hopeless mess, especially that appertaining to stores matters. I
generally had to take this home with me.
Just as I was settling down for my Saturday afternoon siesta
on 16th January 1943 a messenger from the shed brought me a note saying that a
fireman had shot a driver in the foot and was detained in my office! On arrival
at the latter I found the police taking a statement to the effect that he, the
fireman, had taken a double- barrelled shot-gun with him on the engine with the
intention of shooting rabbits on the Ansley Hall branch. Before leaving
Stocking- ford he had loaded the gun and then begun to clean it during which
operation the gun went off and the driver received the whole charge in his foot
at three feet range. His foot was afterwards amputated and he was given a job
in the stores.
In January 1943 Mr. D. C. Urie, the Superintendent of Motive
Power retired and was succeeded by Lieut. Col. Harold Rudgard, one of the
Midland men. It is remarkable how most L.N.W.R. drivers will tackle any strange
engine that comes along and a very good example of this occurred on 18th May
1943 when one of the new American 2-8-0 engines arrived at Nuneaton Station on
its way to Woodford and Hinton on the G.C.R. I went to have a look at it and
accompanied the set of Nuneaton men who were going to re-man it for the next
stage of its journey. As soon as we reached the engine the signal came "off",
the Crewe men said "There you are. That's the regulator and that's the brake"
and got off! The Nuneaton men started away as unconcerned as could be and
slowed down opposite the shed for me to get off after which they went off in
fine style. Admittedly they had a mechanical inspector riding with them on this
occasion and he would have been able to show them a few things about the
footplate fittings which differed a good deal from the British fashion, but
that did not alter the fact that they had to find out how to work the engine as
they went along. This versatility on the part of enginemen is by no means
always the rule as, for example, few Holyhead men are "at home" on any engine
smaller than a "Royal Scot".
A piece of news was that a certain driver who had risen to
fame by lending Winston Churchill his driver's cap when the latter was
photographed on his engine at Euston on some ceremonial occasion had recently
been appointed an "Inspector" on Col. Rudgard's personal staff. Another
interesting item was that R. H. McLean the Assistant District Locomotive
Superintendent at Rugby, Gwilim Lloyd George and Goronwy Owen, one of my old
schoolmasters, had all married sisters. The 1 ooth anniversary of the opening
of Crewe Works was on 3rd September, 1943. Members of the public were then
being invited to work on Sundays as engine-cleaners to clean all parts of
engines other than the motions and we had about 18 apprentices from different
works at Coventry on the job each week-end. They did good work. Mr. Clayton
came on 28th September 1943 to say good-bye on his departure to the
headquarters of the Northern Division at Glasgow and to introduce his
successor, Mr. I. E. Mercer of Toton who, as a District Locomotive
Superintendent, was unique in that he would "talk engines" by the hour! A day
or two previously the mechanical coaling plant had been taken out of service
for three weeks for repairs and Mr. Mercer considered that arrangements should
have been made to lift loaded coal wagons with a steam crane and tip the
contents into engine tenders and bunkers. He sold the idea to Crewe and thereby
brought a hornet's nest about our ears at Nuneaton. We had several attempts at
carrying out his ideas and also tried a small 5-ton steam crane and tubs but
could not improve upon my method of hand coaling. In any case I con-sidered
that the idea of tipping coal from a wagon held in the air by a breakdown crane
was an exceedingly dangerous one.
On Sunday, 20th February 1944, I was at the shed all night
with Darlington and Woodruffe, the Birmingham locomotive inspector to see what
could be done to avoid delays in the morning but as there were no fewer than
eighty engines on the shed at midnight and the loco yard was completely blocked
the position was very nearly hopeless. On Sunday, 2nd April, there were
ninety-five engines on the premises at midnight and things were that much
worse. On 5th April 1944 Messrs. J. W. Watkins, J. S. F.lliot, O. E. Kinsman
and S. E. Parkhouse, together with Col. Rudgard, attended a meeting at Nuneaton
Shed to see what could be done to improve matters with a view to avoiding the
chronic delays to engines leaving the shed and it was finally decided to go in
for either
1. A new engine shed at Midland Junction.
2. The re-opening
of Stockingford Shed on the Midland
3. A connection from the Leicester Loop
to the 60-ft. turntable at Nuneaton shed
The latter was chosen and opened on
Monday, August 7th following, the first engine to go "off" that way being the
one for the 2.30 a.m. to Wellingborough which left the shed at 1.15 a.m.
In March and April 1944 a series of six meetings on various
aspects of motive power work were held at the Queen's Hotel, Birmingham and I
had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Mr. A. H. Whittaker, the
District Locomotive Superintendent at Bristol, who was then nearly seventy
years of age and son of Alfred Whittaker, at one time Locomotive Superintendent
of the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, and inventor of the well-known
tablet- catcher for single-line working which bears his name. Mr. Whittaker was
a very charming man and looked for all the world like an actor. I thoroughly
enjoyed my talks with him. At these meetings papers were read by different
individuals from Headquarters and they were afterwards open to discussion which
on occasion was extremely lively. The paper on The Factory Act and Discipline
which was read by Mr. R. T. Clews, late of Rugby, resulted in what could
scarcely be described as less than an uproar. For the uninitiated, the railway
discipline scheme consists of an exchange of memoranda between the management
and the offender with two different opportunities for the latter to have an
interview with "the head of the department or his representative" so that a
fortnight or more elapses between the offence and the punishment awarded-if
any. Generally the result of this procedure is that the offender is told to be
a good boy and not to transgress again but in others where the delinquent is of
the "awkward" type, he takes advantage of the two opportunities for an
interview and more often than not gets two days "off" for the purpose, with
nothing more than a caution or a reprimand at the end of it, the net result
being that his shortcoming is rewarded by two days absence from work on full
pay!
Mr. Whittaker said he had in hand two or three cases where
interviews had been requested and that in each case if he visited the defendant
he was going to have to spend a night away from home as he could not get to the
place concerned and back in the same day. Then Mr. Spencer of Saltley held up a
list, about a yard long, of cases where discipline Forms No. i had been issued
and so it went on, the general consensus of opinion, with which I concurred,
being that it was just a complete waste of time and in many cases an
impossibility to try and apply the discipline scheme. When the tumult had
subsided Mr. Clews said he knew before he started that he would be getting some
comments-and he had certainly had them! On the night of Friday the 13th October
1939 there was a bad smash at Bletchley when a down express running at about 50
m.p.h. collided with an engine, a 0-8-0 superheater "D", which was attaching a
van to a train standing in the station. The shunting engine was hit on to the
platform and into the refreshment-room, several people being killed. A few days
later on the 17th there were heavy floods in Kilsby Tunnel and a bridge was
washed out on the Northampton line, so that all London trains had to be
diverted at Nuneaton to travel via the South Leicester line, Wigston and the
Midland route. This meant that all "Royal Scot" and "Princess" class engines
coming south had to be changed at Nuneaton for smaller ones, generally two for
one, as the big engines were not allowed over the Midland line. In addition,
pilotmen had to be provided to pilot the drivers of the diverted trains over
the strange route.
On the 27th July 1943, one of the 2-6-6-2 Beyer-Garratt
engines became derailed on the main Coventry line at Hawkesbury Lane owing to
the fireman putting down the water-scoop by mistake with the result that the
scoop picked up a sleeper from a levelcrossing and carried it along like a
battering-ram which struck the stretcher-bar of a pair of points, pulling the
switch-blades together and causing all the wheels of the rear engine to run off
the rails on to the ground. We got it on in 2 hours 10 minutes which was good
going as no one on the Nuneaton Breakdown Gang had tackled a Garratt before and
they are not easy to handle. The breakdown gang was one of the few bright spots
of Nuneaton Shed. On the 9th August 1941 Engine No. 6741, one of the 5 ft. 6
in. 2-4-2 tank engines, broke down between Hinckley and Midland Junction,
Nuneaton. The left hand connecting rod had broken-off at both big and little
ends and damaged both the boiler barrel and the firebox. The connecting rod,
bent in a circle, and the big and little ends were scattered along the line in
the vicinity of Nutt's Lane. A fitter who had neglected to fit properly a
little end setscrew a few days previously was lucky in not having to face a
charge of manslaughter as the enginemen might easily have been seriously
scalded.
Although there were between 80 and 90 engines regularly
allocated to Nuneaton the man in charge of the mechanical side of things was
graded merely as a leading fitter and on the wages staff. As can be imagined
this did not have a good effect on engine maintenance so after a bit of a
struggle I got the "idea" of a salaried repairing engines foreman agreed to in
principle but could not get it implemented on the ground that the leading
fitter, who was unsuitable, would claim the post as his right. One day a
Southern Railway man told me that the 4-6-2 "Merchant Navy" engines were not
all that could be desired and were frequently being towed home owing to the
failure of the Bulleid valve gear which is a weird and wonderful contraption
largely dependent on chains and sprocket-wheels. A few days later I heard
another piece of valve gear scandal which was to the effect that Gresley's "2
to 1" conjugated valve gear for three-cylinder engines was no good and that as
soon as Sir Nigel Gresley was safely out of the way the L.N.E.R.Co. called in
another equally famous locomotive engineer from another railway as a consultant
and asked his opinion as to whether it would be economical to scrap all the
existing sets of this gear? The reply was that although he did not approve of
the gear in question, he did not think it would pay to alter all the engines
fitted with it.
One morning as I was going through the shed yard I passed a
small group of men who were passing some disparaging remarks? about "Hard
Hats", the common term applied to persons in railway supervisory and technical
grades. I did not know them and took no notice beyond just smiling to myself as
I was in total agreement with what I heard them say. However I had not been in
my office many minutes when one of the men I had passed came to see me in order
to apologise as he thought I "must have overheard the remarks" and wanted to
assure me that they had no reference to me personally! I replied that I had not
taken the least offence and that I was of exactly the same opinion, in many
cases, myself. It was a very pleasing and unexpected display of courtesy which
is all too rare these days. On 19th August 1944 Mr. J. S. Elliot asked me on
the telephone from Crewe if I would take charge of Bangor Shed as a permanency?
He said the war and with it "war-time appointments" were coming to an end and
that Mr. Darlington would be wanting to come back to Nuneaton. I was not
particularly thrilled at the prospect as Bangor Shed had a terrible reputation
but I could not do other than accept as gracefully as I could. In the meantime,
pending the return of Mr. Darlington, I was succeeded by Mr. A. C. Black, son
of W. F. Black late of Crewe and we had a few days together so that I could
show him round. I finished up at Nuneaton on Saturday, September 2nd 1944.
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