Dehydration in Steam Loco Crews

[Arun Sharma]

This is probably one for Stationmaster's expert knowledge.

Pre-1968 when firemen would be regularly shovelling coal in a hot environment, where did they get their drinking water from? 

The reason I ask is that there is a well known condition that used to occur in steam ship coal bunker stokers and coal trimmers called 'Stokers' Cramp'. This was caused by sweating water and salts but just replacing the water by drinking so depleting the body's Sodium and Potassium and leading to painful muscle cramps and, in the worst cases, kidney disease.

Did BR loco crews have drinking water on board their locos?- I am assuming that the stuff in the tender or picked up from troughs wasn't potable. If they did have water on board that was fit for drinking, did they also have salt tablets?

 

I am guessing that today's steam loco footplate crews are in a completely different environment as their duties are much shorter.

Edited August 30, 2020 by Arun Sharma
incompleteness

[LMS2968]

The only water aboard a steam engine is feed water for the boiler. Drinks were usually a tea can on the oil shelf above the fire hole; on a goods working it was often possible to refill this at a friendly signal box or, at yards, in the crew mess. In my experience, every opportunity would be taken the refill the cans (the driver would have his own), but it wasn't unknown to use water out of the injector; what was fed into the boiler was at close to boiling point, but this was not the preferred option, for obvious reasons. 

 

Long, non-stop passenger workings gave little, usually no chance to refill the cans so either they took additional cans or reverted to the feed water. There was no provision for raising the salt level beyond what was in their sandwiches.

[The Johnster]

A fair bit of cold tea was carried, and I believe salt tablets were available on some of the more onerous duties according to some of the Canton old hands.  Working a freightliner in the hot summer of '76 I got through 4 refills of a 2 gallon plastic container, and I was only a guard in the back cab; what it was like to shovel 5 tons of coal into the firebox of a Brit on the Red Dragon in such conditions I cannot imagine.  Men who'd done it told me it was not far off the limit of what they could do, a struggle to get the loco warmed up by the time you got to the bottom of the Severn Tunnel then 30 miles of continuous plugging uphill with 14 on, then rebuilding your ruined fire, then shovelling at a high rate as the lost time was recovered on the run in from Reading.  It may have been that some men bought their own salt tablets from local pharmacies; I know some steelworkers used to do this.

 

But the term 'going for a salt tablet' in my day on the railway was code for 'popping out for a quick beer', something accepted as normal especially for firemen in steam days and tolerated as long as you didn't abuse it and somebody knew where you were.  Much of this culture was still apparent in the early 70s, but the writing was on the wall after the Eltham Well Hall accident.  'Going for a salt tablet' was also used by Royal Mail's station staff, heavily abused would be more accurate at Cardiff.

 

Water in columns, cranes, or troughs was not potable, as it was treated for hardness and acidity to make it more suitable for locomotive use, but there was a supply of hot water from the boiler, which since it had been boiled and probably condensed was potable, and could be put into a can and drunk when it had cooled off enough.  The bigger issue for locomen was cold weather, as you work up a sweat on the footplate and have to leave it to perform lamping duties or refill the tender from a water crane, something that commonly ends up with a soggy fireman, in perhaps heavy rain or cold winds; pneumonia conditions!  Then you'd dry off fairly quickly, but work up another sweat.

 

The crew coming off the footplate on ECML non stop KX-Edinburgh trains with corridor tenders, who were relieved at a half way point in time, Thirsk IIRC, had a reserved first class compartment in the leading coach and were given bottled beer and sandwhiches by the restaurant car steward as part of the job.  Regular punters would turn up with bottles as well.  These were double home jobs and their work was finished for the day.

 

A ship's stoker or coal trimmer is in a slightly different situation; 'economic revolutions' requires a continual rate of stoking for the boilers in service, with 'full steam ahead' having the reserve boilers lit up on big ships.  On a loco, very fast rates of shovelling are demanded for short periods assuming the crew and the loco are on top of the job, but there is some respite, to the extent that the fireman is expected to keep an eye out for signals and look after the water as well, and even operate the reverser and injectors on his own on auto work.  The game on a ship is endurance, 4 hours on and 4 hours off to the watch system, steady shovelling or trimming for a 4 hour stretch in a continuous movement as fast as you can manage without completely exhausting yourself before the end of the watch, and leaving sufficient strength to be able to recover fully in the 4 hours off watch, a tough and unremitting existence and the reason officers on many ships entered boiler rooms and stoke holds at mortal risk if they had not been given the green light be the chief stoker. Their job was engines, the boilers were another world...

 

I would have thought that the better run ships carried a supply of salt tablets for stokers and for men working on deck in the tropics, but 'better run' is not a term that you would have applied to most of the tramps working out of the South Wales Ports in the 30s, though things were a bit better by the 50s after wartime Ministry of Supply and Admiralty supervision of ocean going merchant ships had had a positive effect on supplies aboard them, those that hadn't been sunk.  Even during and after the war conditions were sometimes desperate; my dad, a deck officer, contracted TB after spending a year at the end of the war on a Liberty in the tropics.  She was a new build, but the design was for the North Atlantic and her ventilation was hopelessly inadequate for the damp and heat of the Indian Ocean; her regular run was Calcutta-Singapore-Sydney and return.  Dad did this twice, and condensation and mould in his cabin, in the deckhouse and high up, nearly killed him.

 

The first duty of a loco driver is not to drive the locomotive.  It is to stop the locomotive safely at such times and places as are decreed by the working timetable or special instructions under which the train is running.  The first duty of the fireman is nothing to do with the fire.  It is to ensure that a sufficient level of water is maintained in the boiler at all times, and if he doesn't and drops a plug, he'd better have a very good explanation for it or he's up the road.  It is something which, even then, he will never live down for the rest of his railway career.  

Edited August 30, 2020 by The Johnster

[russ p]

Back in those days a fair amount of beer was consumed when waiting for back workings and where pubs were accessible from goods loops and yards .

Before the days of network rail you find well trodden paths for loops , sidings and the like to pubs and fish and chip shops.

I remember being a secondman on a boulby job where we new we would have a long wait at the mine so the driver asked the signalman at redcar if we could go in the loop and we went to a club on one side of the line and a chippy on the other 

[lapford34102]

27 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Water in columns, cranes, or troughs was not potable

Some were. Yetminster's column was supplied by a natural spring and the water was drinkable.

 

Stu

[Trog]

I seem to remember a story about the S&D where freight train drivers would whistle a code, the fireman would drop off the loco and run down a sloping path to the lineside fence, where the local pub landlord or his wife would be waiting to hand over the ordered number of beer bottles and take the money. The fireman would then run up a second sloping path to regain the engine, carrying the shopping.

 

It was not just train crew either I remember track relaying at Euston where we would meet up in the canteen behind the buffers, push a couple of tables together and spread out the layout drawings, using pint glasses as paperweights. Discussing how we were going to do the job while we waited for the possession to be granted.

Edited August 30, 2020 by Trog

[ROY@34F]

In my days I always had a bottle of ready mixed lemon squash in my bag . and usually we would mash one or the others tea in the can , and  share it .Then later in the day mash the other mashing. You always knew where the opportunity would arise . We used to have a measured amount of tea in a little tin and sugar in another , as some drivers did't have sugar . I had a BR cup and washed it in the bucket filled with the slacker pipe when nearly home , and we could was our hands too with some BR soap  !  And as someone else has said , you would know where the pubs were if you knew you would have time to sink a jar or two . I don't remember about salt tablets ...not so mollycoddled as that 60 years ago ! But there would be salt on your home made sandwiches .

I remember engines from Newcastle would often have quite a few empty Newcastle Brown bottles in the tender cupboards .

Quite honestly I always thought it hotter harder work cleaning fires on the ash pits in the loco , than out on the road where you could get some fresh air on you ...sometimes very fresh  !

 

Regards , Roy

 

 

[Tim Hall]

54 minutes ago, russ p said:

Back in those days a fair amount of beer was consumed when waiting for back workings and where pubs were accessible from goods loops and yards .

Before the days of network rail you find well trodden paths for loops , sidings and the like to pubs and fish and chip shops.

I remember being a secondman on a boulby job where we new we would have a long wait at the mine so the driver asked the signalman at redcar if we could go in the loop and we went to a club on one side of the line and a chippy on the other 

I lived opposite that loop from 1986-2001, here's 37507 on an engineers train in it on 6th Jan 91. West Dyke chippy? My house is just beyond the modern red brick ones.

Edited August 30, 2020 by Tim Hall

[russ p]

7 minutes ago, Tim Hall said:

I lived opposite that loop from 1986-2001, here's 37507 on an engineers train in it on 6th Jan 91. West Dyke chippy? My house is just beyond the modern red brick ones.

 

 

That was the one, what was the club called 

Excellent picture 

[Arun Sharma]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

A fair bit of cold tea was carried, and I believe salt tablets were available on some of the more onerous duties according to some of the Canton old hands.  Working a freightliner in the hot summer of '76 I got through 4 refills of a 2 gallon plastic container, and I was only a guard in the back cab; what it was like to shovel 5 tons of coal into the firebox of a Brit on the Red Dragon in such conditions I cannot imagine.  Men who'd done it told me it was not far off the limit of what they could do, a struggle to get the loco warmed up by the time you got to the bottom of the Severn Tunnel then 30 miles of continuous plugging uphill with 14 on, then rebuilding your ruined fire, then shovelling at a high rate as the lost time was recovered on the run in from Reading.  It may have been that some men bought their own salt tablets from local pharmacies; I know some steelworkers used to do this.

 

But the term 'going for a salt tablet' in my day on the railway was code for 'popping out for a quick beer', something accepted as normal especially for firemen in steam days and tolerated as long as you didn't abuse it and somebody knew where you were.  Much of this culture was still apparent in the early 70s, but the writing was on the wall after the Eltham Well Hall accident.  'Going for a salt tablet' was also used by Royal Mail's station staff, heavily abused would be more accurate at Cardiff.

 

Water in columns, cranes, or troughs was not potable, as it was treated for hardness and acidity to make it more suitable for locomotive use, but there was a supply of hot water from the boiler, which since it had been boiled and probably condensed was potable, and could be put into a can and drunk when it had cooled off enough.  The bigger issue for locomen was cold weather, as you work up a sweat on the footplate and have to leave it to perform lamping duties or refill the tender from a water crane, something that commonly ends up with a soggy fireman, in perhaps heavy rain or cold winds; pneumonia conditions!  Then you'd dry off fairly quickly, but work up another sweat.

 

The crew coming off the footplate on ECML non stop KX-Edinburgh trains with corridor tenders, who were relieved at a half way point in time, Thirsk IIRC, had a reserved first class compartment in the leading coach and were given bottled beer and sandwhiches by the restaurant car steward as part of the job.  Regular punters would turn up with bottles as well.  These were double home jobs and their work was finished for the day.

 

A ship's stoker or coal trimmer is in a slightly different situation; 'economic revolutions' requires a continual rate of stoking for the boilers in service, with 'full steam ahead' having the reserve boilers lit up on big ships.  On a loco, very fast rates of shovelling are demanded for short periods assuming the crew and the loco are on top of the job, but there is some respite, to the extent that the fireman is expected to keep an eye out for signals and look after the water as well, and even operate the reverser and injectors on his own on auto work.  The game on a ship is endurance, 4 hours on and 4 hours off to the watch system, steady shovelling or trimming for a 4 hour stretch in a continuous movement as fast as you can manage without completely exhausting yourself before the end of the watch, and leaving sufficient strength to be able to recover fully in the 4 hours off watch, a tough and unremitting existence and the reason officers on many ships entered boiler rooms and stoke holds at mortal risk if they had not been given the green light be the chief stoker. Their job was engines, the boilers were another world...

 

I would have thought that the better run ships carried a supply of salt tablets for stokers and for men working on deck in the tropics, but 'better run' is not a term that you would have applied to most of the tramps working out of the South Wales Ports in the 30s, though things were a bit better by the 50s after wartime Ministry of Supply and Admiralty supervision of ocean going merchant ships had had a positive effect on supplies aboard them, those that hadn't been sunk.  Even during and after the war conditions were sometimes desperate; my dad, a deck officer, contracted TB after spending a year at the end of the war on a Liberty in the tropics.  She was a new build, but the design was for the North Atlantic and her ventilation was hopelessly inadequate for the damp and heat of the Indian Ocean; her regular run was Calcutta-Singapore-Sydney and return.  Dad did this twice, and condensation and mould in his cabin, in the deckhouse and high up, nearly killed him.

 

The first duty of a loco driver is not to drive the locomotive.  It is to stop the locomotive safely at such times and places as are decreed by the working timetable or special instructions under which the train is running.  The first duty of the fireman is nothing to do with the fire.  It is to ensure that a sufficient level of water is maintained in the boiler at all times, and if he doesn't and drops a plug, he'd better have a very good explanation for it or he's up the road.  It is something which, even then, he will never live down for the rest of his railway career.  

Thank you

[Tim Hall]

52 minutes ago, russ p said:

 

 

That was the one, what was the club called 

Excellent picture 

Thanks, I took loads over the years, units, 20s, 31s, 37s, 47s, 56s, 60s, one 66 (that's when I put the house up for sale!), an HST and 4472. Can't remember the club, but there was a street corner pub called the Pig and Whistle about 100 yards from the crossing heading towards town. Anyway, we're a bit OT here!

[The Stationmaster]

20 hours ago, russ p said:

Back in those days a fair amount of beer was consumed when waiting for back workings and where pubs were accessible from goods loops and yards .

Before the days of network rail you find well trodden paths for loops , sidings and the like to pubs and fish and chip shops.

I remember being a secondman on a boulby job where we new we would have a long wait at the mine so the driver asked the signalman at redcar if we could go in the loop and we went to a club on one side of the line and a chippy on the other 

Going up the loop at Marston Crossing it was 2 on the whistle for 2 pints to be ready waiting on the bar over at (what is nowadays) The Carpenters Arms or 3 on the whistle if they expected there a good while and the Enginemen included the Guard in their order.

[tomparryharry]

salt tablets were used in places such as foundries and steelworks. I used to keep some, but they can really mess you up, and causing some nasty chemical imbalance. Working in front of a furnace, the sweat would 'burn off', and you didn't appear to sweat until you stopped. 

 

I spent a couple of years at Havenstreet, where the loco would take water on the Up side water crane. The timetable normally allowed 12 minutes here, so after loco water, you could have a wash and freshen up. The late Ken West had a small soap dish permanently left there, just for this reason. In the hottest summer months , firemen (including myself) would stand over the drain, and give a short 'yank' on the chain. This allowed a couple of gallons of water:- Wonderful! The public would laugh at seeing a grown man taking a partial shower with his clothes on. 20-odd minutes later, and it's as dry as a bone.

Edited September 4, 2020 by tomparryharry
Spelling

[Oldddudders]

Awareness of the location of local hostelries was acute among railwaymen of the era. At Norwood Yard, north of East Croydon, Nos 1&2 Up Reception Sidings were universally known as Teetotal Sidings, due to the implausible distance to a pub!

[johnofwessex]

On 30/08/2020 at 18:58, The Johnster said:

A fair bit of cold tea was carried, and I believe salt tablets were available on some of the more onerous duties according to some of the Canton old hands.  Working a freightliner in the hot summer of '76 I got through 4 refills of a 2 gallon plastic container, and I was only a guard in the back cab; what it was like to shovel 5 tons of coal into the firebox of a Brit on the Red Dragon in such conditions I cannot imagine.  Men who'd done it told me it was not far off the limit of what they could do, a struggle to get the loco warmed up by the time you got to the bottom of the Severn Tunnel then 30 miles of continuous plugging uphill with 14 on, then rebuilding your ruined fire, then shovelling at a high rate as the lost time was recovered on the run in from Reading.  It may have been that some men bought their own salt tablets from local pharmacies; I know some steelworkers used to do this.

 

But the term 'going for a salt tablet' in my day on the railway was code for 'popping out for a quick beer', something accepted as normal especially for firemen in steam days and tolerated as long as you didn't abuse it and somebody knew where you were.  Much of this culture was still apparent in the early 70s, but the writing was on the wall after the Eltham Well Hall accident.  'Going for a salt tablet' was also used by Royal Mail's station staff, heavily abused would be more accurate at Cardiff.

 

Water in columns, cranes, or troughs was not potable, as it was treated for hardness and acidity to make it more suitable for locomotive use, but there was a supply of hot water from the boiler, which since it had been boiled and probably condensed was potable, and could be put into a can and drunk when it had cooled off enough.  The bigger issue for locomen was cold weather, as you work up a sweat on the footplate and have to leave it to perform lamping duties or refill the tender from a water crane, something that commonly ends up with a soggy fireman, in perhaps heavy rain or cold winds; pneumonia conditions!  Then you'd dry off fairly quickly, but work up another sweat.

 

The crew coming off the footplate on ECML non stop KX-Edinburgh trains with corridor tenders, who were relieved at a half way point in time, Thirsk IIRC, had a reserved first class compartment in the leading coach and were given bottled beer and sandwhiches by the restaurant car steward as part of the job.  Regular punters would turn up with bottles as well.  These were double home jobs and their work was finished for the day.

 

A ship's stoker or coal trimmer is in a slightly different situation; 'economic revolutions' requires a continual rate of stoking for the boilers in service, with 'full steam ahead' having the reserve boilers lit up on big ships.  On a loco, very fast rates of shovelling are demanded for short periods assuming the crew and the loco are on top of the job, but there is some respite, to the extent that the fireman is expected to keep an eye out for signals and look after the water as well, and even operate the reverser and injectors on his own on auto work.  The game on a ship is endurance, 4 hours on and 4 hours off to the watch system, steady shovelling or trimming for a 4 hour stretch in a continuous movement as fast as you can manage without completely exhausting yourself before the end of the watch, and leaving sufficient strength to be able to recover fully in the 4 hours off watch, a tough and unremitting existence and the reason officers on many ships entered boiler rooms and stoke holds at mortal risk if they had not been given the green light be the chief stoker. Their job was engines, the boilers were another world...

 

I would have thought that the better run ships carried a supply of salt tablets for stokers and for men working on deck in the tropics, but 'better run' is not a term that you would have applied to most of the tramps working out of the South Wales Ports in the 30s, though things were a bit better by the 50s after wartime Ministry of Supply and Admiralty supervision of ocean going merchant ships had had a positive effect on supplies aboard them, those that hadn't been sunk.  Even during and after the war conditions were sometimes desperate; my dad, a deck officer, contracted TB after spending a year at the end of the war on a Liberty in the tropics.  She was a new build, but the design was for the North Atlantic and her ventilation was hopelessly inadequate for the damp and heat of the Indian Ocean; her regular run was Calcutta-Singapore-Sydney and return.  Dad did this twice, and condensation and mould in his cabin, in the deckhouse and high up, nearly killed him.

 

The first duty of a loco driver is not to drive the locomotive.  It is to stop the locomotive safely at such times and places as are decreed by the working timetable or special instructions under which the train is running.  The first duty of the fireman is nothing to do with the fire.  It is to ensure that a sufficient level of water is maintained in the boiler at all times, and if he doesn't and drops a plug, he'd better have a very good explanation for it or he's up the road.  It is something which, even then, he will never live down for the rest of his railway career.  

 

I have only ever fired on an oil burner and the coal burning ships I have been in were all quite small - Kingswear Castle, Diesbar, Mayflower & Dresden, however I am told that there was a very high suicide rate amongst Merchant Navy stokers as the job was by the sound of it pretty horrendous with 'stoking indicators' a sort of metronome setting the rate at which they had to work.

[PatB]

2 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

 

I have only ever fired on an oil burner and the coal burning ships I have been in were all quite small - Kingswear Castle, Diesbar, Mayflower & Dresden, however I am told that there was a very high suicide rate amongst Merchant Navy stokers as the job was by the sound of it pretty horrendous with 'stoking indicators' a sort of metronome setting the rate at which they had to work.

I suspect that never seeing daylight would have had a negative effect on mental health as well. 

[The Johnster]

Stoking aboard a ship was pretty unrelenting hard work with no satisfaction, no end in sight, like Sisyphus and his eternal rock pushed up the hill to roll down again.  No feeling of a job well done at the end of the watch, just relief that it was over for a short while cancelled out by the knowledge that you'd be doing it again in 4 hours time, and again, and again, and again, with no respite and the contempt of everybody else aboard that all you could do was this lowest order of work.  At least the galley slaves got to see where they were going out of the sweep ports.  It was unremittingly grim.  I am not surprised that some of them went willingly over the side rather than let it continue.

 

If you are doing it during a war, you are the people least likely to be able to get off the ship if you are attacked.  Most stokers rigged up escape ropes for this purpose, because the ladder that you need to climb to leave the stoke hold is going to tear off the bulkhead and  collapse as the ship breaks up, dumping you back into the rising water just as the boilers give out...  In the Royal Navy, you were sealed in by a locked watertight door if your ship was in action; so was everyone else but guess who was furthest below the waterline and furthest from the open deck...

 

On a loco, the job has a high degree of skill and hence job satisfaction, every day presents new challenges and you are never bored, and if your driver is a half decent bloke (not all of them were) your job is very pleasant indeed.  It still required physical toughness and endurance, but could hardly be compared to what ship's stokers suffered.

Edited September 5, 2020 by The Johnster

[roythebus]

Having had a bit of steam experience on the K&ESR, dehydration is a very real problem even on the small locos at fairly low speeds. I had to give up being a trainee fireman a few years ago as I sweat more than normal and one very hot summer's day I drank over 3 litres of water on a round trip. At the end of the journey I collapsed in the end coach. Luckily the fireman was taking the train back.

 

With a small loco it's not always possible to "escape" the heat of the boiler backplate as you can on a loco with a bigger cab. There's always safety notices on the railway especially about dehydration, examine the colour of your pee, if it's "this" colour you are dehydrated. No mention of salt tablets either.

[Wheatley]

Given that loco crews were regularly exposed to rain, sleet, cold, heat, asbestos, smoke, coal dust, scalding steam, potential suffocation and all manner of other horrors (compared to modern ideas of H&S) and largely expected to man up and deal with it, I expect dehydration was just another hazard they took in their stride. On most jobs (ie top link prestige non-stop trips excepted) there were plenty of places to refill tea cans and mash up, or refill your old pop bottle with tap water. Loco crews were not always welcome in all these places of course...

Edited September 5, 2020 by Wheatley

[The Stationmaster]

15 hours ago, Wheatley said:

Given that loco crews were regularly exposed to rain, sleet, cold, heat, asbestos, smoke, coal dust, scalding steam, potential suffocation and all manner of other horrors (compared to modern ideas of H&S) and largely expected to man up and deal with it, I expect dehydration was just another hazard they took in their stride. On most jobs (ie top link prestige non-stop trips excepted) there were plenty of places to refill tea cans and mash up, or refill your old pop bottle with tap water. Loco crews were not always welcome in all these places of course...

According to most Old Oak men who worked double home turns the best way of 'getting a wet' was to have a bottle of cold tea with them which could apparently be sufficient to cover Paddington - Plymouth or back if drunk carefully.   Generally reckoned by the afficionados to be much better and far more refreshing than tap water.  The very worst thing was a bottle of 'pop' because it was too gassy.

[Wheatley]

Thanks Mike. I was thinking more of the re-use of the screw top pop bottle for water (or cold tea !) rather than for pop as such. They were popular in signalboxes for keeping milk in, as were large medicine bottles, as they could be relied on not to leak all over your bag and were widely available. Nowadays of course one is spoilt for choice for water bottles of all shapes, sizes and practicalities. 

[JOHNMCDRAGON]

I remember hearing that on one of the record breaking hot  summer days last summer that a crew on the last trip of the day on a steam loco on the Nene Valley Railway at Peterborough were unable to continue due to dehydration and  another crew had to be summoned to take the train back on the final trip to Wansford.

[NorthEndCab]

On 05/09/2020 at 20:43, Wheatley said:

Given that loco crews were regularly exposed to rain, sleet, cold, heat, asbestos, smoke, coal dust, scalding steam, potential suffocation and all manner of other horrors (compared to modern ideas of H&S) and largely expected to man up and deal with it, I expect dehydration was just another hazard they took in their stride. On most jobs (ie top link prestige non-stop trips excepted) there were plenty of places to refill tea cans and mash up, or refill your old pop bottle with tap water. Loco crews were not always welcome in all these places of course...

 

Which is presumably why when you see photographs / footage of steam-era railwaymen they tend to look a lot older than they actually were. 
 

I took this screenshot from “The Elizabethan Express,” British Transport Film. I know a top-link express driver would have been one of the senior men on the depot, but he looks 10+ years older than he  realistically was. (I could have used the other driver before the halfway change, but you get the point.)

 

It also seems to be a common theme that they didn’t survive long after retirement. I don’t know whether that was peculiar the the footplate grade In those days though?

[pH]

26 minutes ago, NorthEndCab said:

It also seems to be a common theme that they didn’t survive long after retirement. I don’t know whether that was peculiar the the footplate grade In those days though?

 

It was wasn’t just footplate crew or even railwaymen who didn’t live long after retirement, it was everyone.

When the UK government pension was introduced, I believe the actuarial calculation was that the average pensioner would collect it for between 3 and 4 years.

[DavidB-AU]

 

1 hour ago, pH said:

When the UK government pension was introduced, I believe the actuarial calculation was that the average pensioner would collect it for between 3 and 4 years.

 

That was for those who actually got to that age. When the pension was introduced in 1908 the average life expectancy was about 55 and only a third of the population lived long enough to retire. By 1930 life expectancy had increased to 65, but this was largely attributable to the growth in retail and office jobs compared to other sectors. The number of commercial and clerical jobs in the UK increased from 673,000 in 1900 to 2.3 million in 1930 while the number employed in construction and manufacturing was in decline due to increasing mechanisation. (Labour Force and Employment 1800-1960) For those working manual jobs in mining, agriculture, etc. your life expectancy didn't improve much until the 1950s.

 

Cheers
David