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The human side of the railway...


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2 hours ago, woodenhead said:

 

Why is it that I can tell this is recent (without reading the words or seeing the watermark)?

 

There is nothing in the image out of place but I know it's modern, is it just that HD imagery is taken that it so obvious?

Hi Woodenhead,

 

My suspicion is that both members of the crew are old codgers whereas, back in the day their ages would have been separated by approximately twenty years. Another observation is that there is a visual lack of what may be termed 'casual competence' in what they are doing, they are quite obviously deliberately concentrating upon the job in hand.

 

Gibbo.

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28 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Woodenhead,

 

My suspicion is that both members of the crew are old codgers whereas, back in the day their ages would have been separated by approximately twenty years. Another observation is that there is a visual lack of what may be termed 'casual competence' in what they are doing, they are quite obviously deliberately concentrating upon the job in hand.

 

Gibbo.

 

Quite. Other tell tales are that neither of them has a fag in hand/in mouth and the engine and wagon are far too clean.

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2 hours ago, Bon Accord said:

 

Quite. Other tell tales are that neither of them has a fag in hand/in mouth and the engine and wagon are far too clean.

 

1 hour ago, martin_wynne said:

 

They are also too tall:

 

_69570167_male_heights_464.gif

 

Martin.

And the plastic tarpaulin laying in the wagon.

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5 hours ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Woodenhead,

 

My suspicion is that both members of the crew are old codgers whereas, back in the day their ages would have been separated by approximately twenty years. Another observation is that there is a visual lack of what may be termed 'casual competence' in what they are doing, they are quite obviously deliberately concentrating upon the job in hand.

 

Gibbo.

Plenty of places 'back in the day' where they weren't necessarily separated by 20 years.  There were some depots were men retired as Firemen (or Second Men in the diesel age) because promotion was slow and if they hadn't moved away to get their job they could be stuck, in fact in some places you could even find Drivers who were younger than their mate because they had moved away to get their job then come back on a First Preference move.

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On ‎16‎/‎03‎/‎2019 at 21:44, The Stationmaster said:

Plenty of places 'back in the day' where they weren't necessarily separated by 20 years.  There were some depots were men retired as Firemen (or Second Men in the diesel age) because promotion was slow and if they hadn't moved away to get their job they could be stuck, in fact in some places you could even find Drivers who were younger than their mate because they had moved away to get their job then come back on a First Preference move.

I remember a tale Jim Carter, Patricroft driver and famous photographer, told me of from soon after he passed for driving at the very young age of 23. WCML trains were being diverted around Warrington, so Crewe - Manchester and then Manchester - Wigan via Tyldesley. The drivers, of course, didn't know these roads and Jim was one of the men allocated as conductors. The conductor driver, of course, took the regulator, and the first driver he conducted wasn't happy at handing over to this young boy. There was indeed a twenty year age difference between the - new - driver and fireman, the latter being 45 and he was VERY unhappy at firing to this youth. But Jim was the only one who knew the road so they were stuck with it.

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I think a steam driver from the 1960's would have placed the tender filler hole rather more accurately for filling. Cannot remember having to hold the bag in the tank, more like just lean on the steel filler pipe.

   I once codged a lift from Leamington back to Banbury at silly o'clock ,am and very dark, with a Nuneaton crew, the fireman was near as old as the driver and both older than my regular mate at Banbury. First time I got to watch the if it will go through the firehole that will do firing style, with the engine working hard. Some lumps were easy 3ft long so no shovel involved there. Interesting!

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I was a driver at 21 , being made up during my MP12 course and on passing out I remember having a ding with an old York driver on the coil empties from Corby.

I got on the locos at York yard south and gave or rather tried to give the old #### a key. He said where's your driver I don't take keys off secondmen .  He wouldn't believe I was a diver and in the end I took his key of and put mine in and basically told him to #### off!

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There is a young driver at Colas who i put forward to go on an instructor course when I left as he is very keen, knowledgeable (I phone him for class 37 advice!) etc

 

sure enough he has done the instructors course and run his first class 67 course the other week but was worried about the “older hand” drivers being funny with him and not willing to listen, take advice etc as he is young and only been on the railway a few years, I just told him that if he gets anyone like that then simply stop the training, speak to management and the driver can then explain to those higher up why training was stopped

 

as it happened he had no issues, he and the trainees enjoyed the course and he’s looking forward to the next one 

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Oddly I came across a very similar situation in Poland on a trip there in 1975.  In the north recruitment was clearly difficult so there were quite young (i,.e. men in their 20s) driving whereas down in the south there were Firemen who were equally clearly well on in their 50s.  It all struck me as rather unusual in a country where I'd expected labour to be 'directed' but it obviously wasn't.

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Just before Christmas I was up at Basford Hall waiting for a loco swap in the 'middle' cabin with a few other drivers, I was chatting with a young hipster looking lad who I wrongly assumed was a new graduate driver, he was actually the mentor driver for the forty five year old graduate sitting beside him. It pays not to make assumptions in this job!

 

This morning I cadged a lift from Lawley Street back to Rugby on a light engine driven by an ex-Old Oak colleague, of course within minutes we were chatting about the good old days at 81A and remembered how some of the drivers looked down at us young pups, not believing we were old enough to be on the footplate, never mind driving round the place on our own. On the Summer only Saturday jobs down to the West Country we'd often find ourselves upstairs in the mess room on platform 1 at Exeter St.Davids surrounded by men in their fifties who were still not passed drivers.

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3 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Oddly I came across a very similar situation in Poland on a trip there in 1975.  In the north recruitment was clearly difficult so there were quite young (i,.e. men in their 20s) driving whereas down in the south there were Firemen who were equally clearly well on in their 50s.  It all struck me as rather unusual in a country where I'd expected labour to be 'directed' but it obviously wasn't.

If memory serves footplate progression in Poland wasn't quite as linear as in the UK, with both Firemen and Drivers being considered (in some areas at least) as career paths in their own right rather than as with the UK situation. Accordingly I think it was possible to fast track to a Driver's position and so spending a minimal amount of time as Fireman (or only as much as training required) , yet at the same depot you would have other men as Firemen who may then stay at that position for life or go off in a different direction.  It sounds a bit strange and it did strike me that way when I first heard of it.

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43 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

Looked at that chart about people hieghts all very well but I have lost two inches this last twelve years am I doing something wrong!!

Hi LMS,

You could try thicker socks ?!?!?!

 

Gibbo.

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9 hours ago, russ p said:

I was a driver at 21 , being made up during my MP12 course and on passing out I remember having a ding with an old York driver on the coil empties from Corby.

I got on the locos at York yard south and gave or rather tried to give the old #### a key. He said where's your driver I don't take keys off secondmen .  He wouldn't believe I was a diver and in the end I took his key of and put mine in and basically told him to #### off!

Hi RussP,

 

I was appointed works manager of an engineering firm at the age of 28. Once, while out doing some site work involving the hydraulic system on a canal lift bridge, with two of my men both approximately double my age, the waterways chaps decided that it would be funny to spend all day taking the mickey out of the "apprentice". They did this all day and were quite rude about it, but between us we decided to let them get on with it because at the end of the day the job required signing off.

At the end of the day they asked the oldest one to sign the job off and were told by him to go and see the boss, they then asked the second oldest and got the same answer.

How we all laughed when it turned out the "apprentice " was in charge, they must have laughed even more after I had filed a report about their rudeness toward me bye way of their depot manager.

 

My latest age related carry on involved a 32 year old taking the mickey as if I was a similar age to him for a period of a few months. This stopped quite abruptly one lunch time when he asked how old my daughter is. When I told him that she is 29, he nearly fell of his chair.

 

Gibbo.

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On 19/03/2019 at 13:42, Rugd1022 said:

Just before Christmas I was up at Basford Hall waiting for a loco swap in the 'middle' cabin with a few other drivers, I was chatting with a young hipster looking lad who I wrongly assumed was a new graduate driver, he was actually the mentor driver for the forty five year old graduate sitting beside him. It pays not to make assumptions in this job!

 

This morning I cadged a lift from Lawley Street back to Rugby on a light engine driven by an ex-Old Oak colleague, of course within minutes we were chatting about the good old days at 81A and remembered how some of the drivers looked down at us young pups, not believing we were old enough to be on the footplate, never mind driving round the place on our own. On the Summer only Saturday jobs down to the West Country we'd often find ourselves upstairs in the mess room on platform 1 at Exeter St.Davids surrounded by men in their fifties who were still not passed drivers.

Reminds me of when HSTs finally got onto the West Of England route and a whole host of new Drivers' jobs made their appearance in the footplate Vacancy List - the Seniority Date for a Driver at Penzance suddenly moved from 1944 to somewhere in the 1960s. (And an Old Oak Driver with a First Preference in for Penzance suddenly found that a couple of weeks later he would be back somewhere he'd left many years previously.)

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2 minutes ago, Rugd1022 said:

The part you wrote in brackets Mike has reminded me that our newest arrival at Rugby found himself moving here from Peterborough almost by accident a few weeks ago for a similar reason!

 

 

I found over the years that some folk had totally forgotten that they had put in a First Preference hence considerable surprise when the job came up.  And of course officially it was not permitted to cancel a First Preference after the Vacancy List had been published & posted. (I'll not comment on what might possibly have happened unofficially although it is perhaps not unreasonable to say that occasional 'clerical errors' were not unknown ;) ).

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