How many members work (or worked) on the Big Railway?

[Gareth 73]

I was visiting 'boxes in the Shrewsbury area one day back in the early '90s (yes, 'busman's holiday 'of a sort') and walked into one 'box where the Signalman was in the process of putting together the etched valvegear on a new chassis - complete with Portescap motor - to go underneath a heavily fettled Hornby streamlined 'Duchess' body. The DI who was taking me round didn't bat an eyelid and it was really a fascinating sort of update on the long established habit of some Signalmen being enthusiastic, and skillful, menbers of watches and clocks.

That will have been Norman in Crewe bank box I'm guessing, he was very skilled and I spent ages learning the box so he could crack on with his modelling. When I worked at Marshbook box I had a visit from the district inspector who's first words on entering was " me it looks like Crewe works in here". Well there were a few locos been worked on at the time. Now I'm stuck in the WMSC no real chance to do any of that.

Edited May 28, 2018 by Gareth 73

[Mike Storey]

That will have been Norman in Crewe bank box I'm guessing, he was very skilled and I spent ages learning the box so he could crack on with his modelling. When I worked at Marshbook box I had a visit from the district inspector who's first words on entering was "###### me it looks like Crewe works in here". Well there were a few locos been worked on at the time. Now I'm stuck in the WMSC no real chance to do any of that.

 

Signallers were obviously more productive folk further North.

 

Apart from one chap at Margate, who was an extremely skilled knitter and embroiderer (and boy, was he weird, but not because of that), and the odd car mechanic venture (only tolerated on Sundays when the services were hourly) my only formal encounters with signallers' use of their "spare" time was twofold:

 

A few decades ago, at one seriously busy SR box, we did out of hours visits to the box on three successive Sundays, each time only to find only one signaller on duty, who swore blind his mate had just gone out for something or other. So I waited around for an hour or so with the Area Inspector. Needless to say, that box went to single manning on Sundays, with little resistance, a few weeks later. We had the Form 1's already typed, should the LDC not have agreed.

 

But at another, on nights, not always busy but at a key junction through which late night diversions and EW trains could often be routed at short notice, we found the signaller happily watching a television, hooked up to the socket for the overhead light. Bad enough. But then we found the empty tins of lager in the bin, and several more in his locker. Oops. I did not enjoy having to man the box for the rest of that shift.

 

If only there were more and sober, railway modellers sarf of the Thames.

[Blobrick]

I started my Railway career in 1979, so I’m in my 5th decade! 

 

Although l was born in Glasgow, my family moved to Crewe in 1965,as my father was a Guard . We spent 11 years there, and its these memories of the last Jinties and electric blue AL series locomotives, and green EE type 4s l still hold dear. I seem to remember the whistling of the class 40s could always be hear all round the town at any time of day or night.

 

My father received a promotion and my family moved to London in 1976 where l finished my education.

 

Even in the late 70s it seemed a natural step to follow my father onto the railway.

 

 

I started on the foot plate at Euston as a traction trainee in 1979, then moved to Waterloo under an 8B move in 1980, and back to Euston three months later as a Second man. 

 

Joined the S&T 1981 working in the S&T design office in Carlow street, near Mornington Crescent. I was involved with the testing and commissioning of the then new West Hampstead PSB and various other projects around the country until the Drawing Office moved to Birmingham in 1985 and me along with it. 

 

Premotion took me home to Glasgow in 1988 where l worked in the S&T scheme development section before moving into the Control in 1994.

 

1998 saw me moved to Swindon Control and 2000 to Derby to help set up the new Control in Derby, first as a Senior Controller and then as the Tech Support Engr. The whole control moved to the new EMCC in Derby in 2008 along with the local TOC EMT.

 

The railway has changed out of all recognition, both my parents worked in the industry and certainly would not recognise it today!

 

[coachmann]

I now think there is some truth in the old saying about 'steam in the blood', or at least 'railways in the blood'.  Why else do people just like talking about their time working on the railway, but not about any other kind of employment they were in during their working lives. The old man across from us got demobbed after WW2 and worked on the LNER Cheshire Lines section around Stockport etc as a Goods Guard. He comes over as very intelligent and I think he had left the railway for better prospects and money around 1949. Yet he will talk till the cows come home about that railway job. His wife told me this morning she and her hubby met a man at Conwy who in earlier life had worked on the footplate in Birmingham, and she new they would talk for an hour!  He got the railway out of his system on me years ago, but he occasionally borrows one of my Foxline railway books.

Edited May 28, 2018 by coachmann

[Titan]

I would certainly lend weight to the theory that railways are in the blood, on my mothers side, my great grandfather was a signalman in Glasgow, my Grandfather was Shedmaster at Grantham, and later on assistant Chief mechanical and electrical Engineer (Eastern Region) responsible for looking after Deltics. It was most unfortunate that he had an early death from a heart attack when I was six years old. I am sure there was much I could have learnt from him, although I do have some fond memories. It was also noticeable that Deltic availability took a nosedive not long after his retirement...

 

One of his sons (my uncle) took an apprenticeship with BR, however on a train one day he met some recruitment officers from British Airways who made an offer he could not refuse, and he became an airline pilot instead making far more money than he ever would have with BR. He built his own 7 1/4 inch gauge railway around his house with a superb Parallel boiler Scot that he built, and also a battery AC electric - I think an 86 but not too sure.  My Grandfather on my fathers side worked for the NCB, Specifically with the operation of the underground railways.

 

And then there is me. I wanted to follow in my Grandfathers footsteps, and although aiming for traction and rolling stock - I started as a trainee engineering technician with BR in 1990, and did stints at Ilford, Clacton, Slade Green, Selhurst and Strawberry hill, as well as my main base of Derby Railway Technical Centre, I ended up in electrification as that is where the demand was. My stint training in Amber House working on the Leeds-Bradford electrification serving me well, as well as happening to know a few useful railway people too...

 

It will not surprise me if that by the time I retire, I will be one of the last who started their employment under BR, something I will be very proud of. In fact there still seems to be a bit of camaraderie amongst ex BR employees, the spirit of BR does live on, despite the attempts to extinguish it!

Edited May 28, 2018 by Titan

[28XX]

I started with BR LM in May 1976. Student Technican Engineer was my job title. I spent 5 happy years training with many different departments within the S&T.

 

My job, post training, was in the signalling drawing office in Birmingham, but after only 18 months I made the worst decision of my life and left for a job at Froude Engineering in Worcester. The money was far better, but it was the end of a career. One by one the heavy engineering jobs vanished from Britain, and I have never had any sense of belonging with any job I’ve held since.

[Nearholmer]

"In fact there still seems to be a bit of camaraderie amongst ex BR employees, the spirit of BR does live on, despite the attempts to extinguish it!"

 

The bare fact is that BR trained us properly, in whatever branch, and at whatever level, we entered the outfit. The national railway industry seems, even now, to be struggling to put back together the quality of training that privatisation put asunder.

 

We were very fortunate, I think.

[Rivercider]

"In fact there still seems to be a bit of camaraderie amongst ex BR employees, the spirit of BR does live on, despite the attempts to extinguish it!"

 

The bare fact is that BR trained us properly, in whatever branch, and at whatever level, we entered the outfit. The national railway industry seems, even now, to be struggling to put back together the quality of training that privatisation put asunder.

 

We were very fortunate, I think.

When I started my first job as a clerk in the civil engineers in Bristol there were six other clerks on the section,

between them they must have had about 100 years railway experience. One had been a clerk all his railway career, another had been a signalman

until the Bristol MAS scheme, when he took the clerical exam, there was another former signalman, another had been a guard and shunter.

Towards the end of my career I think there might have been offices with about 100 weeks railway experience!

 

cheers 

cheers 

[modfather]

I've just passed ten years in maintenance. The change from 15x,14x and hst to 800 then upside down to Auckland emus has been fun.

 

Bored with trains now. Hiking and surfing have taken over lately.

Edited May 29, 2018 by modfather

[TheSignalEngineer]

I started with BR LM in May 1976. Student Technican Engineer was my job title. I spent 5 happy years training with many different departments within the S&T.

 

My job, post training, was in the signalling drawing office in Birmingham, but after only 18 months I made the worst decision of my life and left for a job at Froude Engineering in Worcester. The money was far better, but it was the end of a career. One by one the heavy engineering jobs vanished from Britain, and I have never had any sense of belonging with any job I’ve held since.

Definitely wrong move. 12 months later I was running the project design office and so strapped for staff you could have picked your grade and been on at least 12 hours o/t every week. If you hadn't made a week's pay by Tuesday lunch time it was a slack week.

[TheSignalEngineer]

Towards the end of my career I think there might have been offices with about 100 weeks railway experience!

 

cheers

cheers

When I was running Bletchley Signalling Works depot 100 weeks qualified you for a Long Service Medal Edited May 29, 2018 by TheSignalEngineer

[Oldddudders]

Signal designers became more valuable than gold-dust in the late ‘80s. As the Sectors got into their stride schemes of all sorts were being devised - but the key designers were simply not available. ISTR someone saying there were only about 800-odd competent persons of the right sort in the known world. Westinghouse had sandwich-board men patrolling outside the Network Technical Centre (neé Southern House) in Croydon, offering jobs to those who would jump ship.

 

A chap called Brian Hesketh at DS&TE was rallying Sector support for creation of another design office in Birmingham, while those Sectors held regular meetings of Business Resources Forum to try to provide a pecking order among schemes, based on Net Present Value to the industry. Then the first boom-to-bust hit in 1990, and the income streams dipped, so scheme affordability reduced.

 

Trying times.

[Mike Storey]

Signal designers became more valuable than gold-dust in the late ‘80s. As the Sectors got into their stride schemes of all sorts were being devised - but the key designers were simply not available. ISTR someone saying there were only about 800-odd competent persons of the right sort in the known world. Westinghouse had sandwich-board men patrolling outside the Network Technical Centre (neé Southern House) in Croydon, offering jobs to those who would jump ship.

 

A chap called Brian Hesketh at DS&TE was rallying Sector support for creation of another design office in Birmingham, while those Sectors held regular meetings of Business Resources Forum to try to provide a pecking order among schemes, based on Net Present Value to the industry. Then the first boom-to-bust hit in 1990, and the income streams dipped, so scheme affordability reduced.

 

Trying times.

 

Quite true, and by the early 2000's we were pleading with signalling specialists (in Major Projects) not to retire, which didn't work so well when we started bringing back retired ones on contracts at some way above the usual salary for employed designers. In theory, we could not bring anyone back on a contract until they had been gone from our employment for at least 6 months, not that that stopped it, by paying even more to use them via people like Jacobs etc. to get around the rules. Meanwhile, there was a major attempt to persuade other engineers to re-train in signalling..... Happy Days, not.

[QWILPEN]

Well to be honest I've never worked for the railway , but I have worked on it in a fasion.

 

I work for one of the Big 6 Electricity companies and spent a number of years reading and exchanging the meters in North Wales / Merseyside & Cheshire, during which I spent many hours traipsing trackside, ( I still dont know why so many meters were the wrong side of the fence).

 

Spent many hours working with Trevor Owen from LLandudno ( I think) very decent Gent.

 

my last track side job was to "Find" all the meters from Euston to Gretna and as far across as Sheffield & The S&C as many hadnt been read for years.

 

It had to be my last as I knew I woundn't pass my next medical due to hearing loss.

 

Great days though and I was much thinner ( I wonder why).

 

Steve

Edited May 29, 2018 by QWILPEN

[Dan Griffin]

14 years this year, started as a signaller at Helpston, went onto the Relief and covered all the 'out based' boxes in the Peterborough area, then when that jib was dissolved, I took up residency at Eastfield, for anyone who knows Peterborough, that's the sidings next to Toys R Us. After a few years there I went into the PSB as a signaller, and now im a Shift Signalling manager in the same PSB. I was recently successful in being promoted to a Train Running controller in the York ROC, but had to turn the job down due to various reasons, so an SSM I shall remain for the foreseeable future. I also did my work experience with Railtrack in the same PSB im now manager of, little did I know then what that work experience would lead too!

[russ p]

Were you the chap who ran me early with a 170 to Derby on Sunday?

If you were cheers!

[Nearholmer]

Back to the ‘BR Boys’ for a moment, if everyone will pardon.

 

One thing to mention, that I think took the shine off all that good training a little, was the wages/salaries, which certainly didn’t stretch very far in the SE, and I suspect didn’t elsewhere either.

 

Although I greatly liked the place in many respects, especially the people, I left in the late 1980s for a combination of reasons, one of which was money, because BR never quite seemed to find a way of paying engineers ‘the going rates’.

 

Do others think that BR wages/salaries were a tad mean?

[Dan Griffin]

Were you the chap who ran me early with a 170 to Derby on Sunday?

If you were cheers!

I was on sunday 07-19 so there a good possibility if you passed in those times!

[beast66606]

Were you the chap who ran me early with a 170 to Derby on Sunday?

If you were cheers!

 

[TheSignalEngineer]

Signal designers became more valuable than gold-dust in the late ‘80s. As the Sectors got into their stride schemes of all sorts were being devised - but the key designers were simply not available. ISTR someone saying there were only about 800-odd competent persons of the right sort in the known world. Westinghouse had sandwich-board men patrolling outside the Network Technical Centre (neé Southern House) in Croydon, offering jobs to those who would jump ship.

 

Cost cutting of the early/mid 1980s led to loss of a large number of people. One re-org got rid of over 100 S&T staff from the LMR alone, so it was no surprise to some of us that Clapham happened. I had been told off in front of a large audience for carrying out two processes in my office and was expressly forbidden to continue doing them by a very senior member of the profession as they were a waste of time and money. These two processes became national standards following Clapham. 

Westinghouse must have decided that it was easier to buy Signalling Control UK which was formed from four of the Project Offices plus Swanley Depot than trying to get people to join them. At the time SCUK was reputedly the largest Signalling Design organisation in the world.

Signal designers became more valuable than gold-dust in the late ‘80s. As the Sectors got into their stride schemes of all sorts were being devised - but the key designers were simply not available. ISTR someone saying there were only about 800-odd competent persons of the right sort in the known world. Westinghouse had sandwich-board men patrolling outside the Network Technical Centre (neé Southern House) in Croydon, offering jobs to those who would jump ship.

 

A chap called Brian Hesketh at DS&TE was rallying Sector support for creation of another design office in Birmingham, while those Sectors held regular meetings of Business Resources Forum to try to provide a pecking order among schemes, based on Net Present Value to the industry. Then the first boom-to-bust hit in 1990, and the income streams dipped, so scheme affordability reduced.

 

Trying times.

Brian was my boss for several spells from during my training until he retired. That was around the time when the new Project Office was being set up. I had managed to escape his clutches during a re-org in the 1980s but he must have forgiven me for messing up his organisation chart as he got me back into there when it started. Ironically I was running the recruitment programme when he retired and I ended up signing his timesheets when he returned to do some training of the new starters for us.

 

Incidentally two of the other existing BR staff to transfer into the embryonic new West Midlands group were Mike T of this parish (Charlotte Road and Widnes Vine Yard) and Narrow Gauge modeller Steve Holland.

 

 

Quite true, and by the early 2000's we were pleading with signalling specialists (in Major Projects) not to retire, which didn't work so well when we started bringing back retired ones on contracts at some way above the usual salary for employed designers. In theory, we could not bring anyone back on a contract until they had been gone from our employment for at least 6 months, not that that stopped it, by paying even more to use them via people like Jacobs etc. to get around the rules. Meanwhile, there was a major attempt to persuade other engineers to re-train in signalling..... Happy Days, not.

I got out partly because of the pressures of the job caused by lack of suitable staff, not only in signalling but Railtrack Project Managers who had no idea of how a railway was put together. Paperwork increases caused by legislation changes and having to justify every decision to your own Commercial Manager then to the Client meant that I was spending less than 20% of my time on signalling technical matters. On top of that because of what the Tax Man and Pension fund was taking out of my pay I was actually making a profit of £2 per hour for the time I was out of the house. The problem with coming back when you were a 'Lifer' like me was that after taking my pension, I could work about seven hours per week at the rates I could get before the Tax Man started taking 40% so I tried to limit my activities to about 50 days a year.

[Oldddudders]

The Signal Engineer touches upon an important point. The nature of the Old Railway, and presumably the present one and indeed many other organisations, is that the reward for being good at your job was promotion. That partially meets Kevin’s point about modest salaries, but it also meant, paradoxically, that your best designer/engineer/operator got promoted away from where he/she made the most impact, into a job where budgets and staff numbers took up much more time. There was, I suppose, no alternative route to the top for those who deserved it - Ken Burrage and Richard Bonham-Carter come to mind as Southern chaps who excelled in their respective disciplines - but while they undoubtedly had the judgement to be at the top, their engineering skills had been wasted.

 

When doing the BRIS preparations for sale, I recall an ISU manager in the North West bemoaning the fact that all he had really wanted to do was design bridges, and it was years since he’d had any chance to do so. I wonder how many others, while grateful for paying a mortgage, also lost their enthusiasm due to the tedium of managing rather than doing.

 

Edit : The chap I have just referred to, Richard by forename, surname lost in time, had the misfortune to be outed as an enthusiast. How? I detected him on a tv film about the East Lancs Railway - where he was seen on the footplate! His Project Manager for BRIS, Peter, but surname also lost, was an S&T engineer, who also volunteered there.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Oldddudders

[russ p]

I was on sunday 07-19 so there a good possibility if you passed in those times!

Went past around 13.30 so thanks!

Had 75mph path for some reason, then on way home had a 100mph path yet it took longer

[TheSignalEngineer]

I remember a similar incident of 'outing' when a member of a Project team I had been involved with turned up on TV firing a steam loco in Eastern Europe.

 

In my own career one of the reasons I came off project engineering/management was that I had tbe oppurtunity to go back to developing projects. As privatisation progressed I ended up spending most of my time discussing the impact of traffic requirements on existing layouts with RT, TOCs and other engineers what moves were needed at junctions and stations. I was also involved in assessing benefits and problems of new technology such as LED signals and VDU control centres, and as signalling industry representative on a major development advising what solutions were readily available or shortly to be launched or those which were not going to be feasible to use, also the most practical ways of getting it built when faced with all the interdisciplinary interfaces and the need to keep the train service running as much as possible.

[Nearholmer]

OD

 

The standard dodge, used by the smarter senior managers on BR, to keep specialist technical staff, was ‘grade inflation’, whereby fancied-up JDs would be used to move us onto and through managerial grades, while we continued to undertake primarily engineering work (which, at the time, also included what later became the separate discipline of project management). The same ruse was employed to retain lawyers in the property department and elsewhere IIRC.

 

It was all rather mad, and it would have been far simpler to use the system that applied in the Electricity Supply Industry at the time, based in turn on Royal Navy and REME practice I think, which overtly recognised “two lines of promotion”, one that involved managing large numbers of people and/or complex processes, and another that recognised technical specialisms.

 

Anyway, all a long time ago.

 

K

[The Stationmaster]

Back to the ‘BR Boys’ for a moment, if everyone will pardon.

 

One thing to mention, that I think took the shine off all that good training a little, was the wages/salaries, which certainly didn’t stretch very far in the SE, and I suspect didn’t elsewhere either.

 

Although I greatly liked the place in many respects, especially the people, I left in the late 1980s for a combination of reasons, one of which was money, because BR never quite seemed to find a way of paying engineers ‘the going rates’.

 

Do others think that BR wages/salaries were a tad mean?

 

Exactly so Kevin - generally the basic money was very poor on top of which we had a pay squeeze over several years in the 1980s which makes what's gone on recently in some parts of the state sector look like manna from heaven.  Thus many people, and not just in the south east were relying on Rest Day working, Sunday turns, and overtime to make ends meet.  Things didn't really change massively until the early '90s when you could at least start to bargain over pay increase on promotion in management grades.

 

But - as we were repeatedly told in earlier years 'at least you'll get a good pension and you've got travel facilities' which in comparison with many other jobs back then was quite true.  Perhaps the pension bit was part of the old truism that you can't get it twice?