How many times was it found that railwaymen's stories were a bit unbelievable/exaggerated or outright madeup?

[Wickham Green too]

I was given a copy of 'Railways' Strangest Tales' a few Christmases ago ( Portico, 2017 ) ... supposedly 'Extraordinary but true stories from almost 200 years of rail travel'. Yes, one or two I did recognise and probably were true BUT some were so technically implausible as to be totally unbelievable - for instance there were a couple of very gruesome murders, described in great detail*, where the murderer had made his escape down the corridor ...... but at a date and/or place where corridor stock would have been unknown.

 

* who witnessed them ?

[BR traction instructor]

When the last mid eighties DMU of the day got stuck in the snow near the summit of our line around midnight, we were asked to use our ice/snow clearing formation of 2 x class 20 with an independent snow plough at each end to rescue 20+ stranded passengers off the DMU. We stopped with the cab door of one class 20 (before drawing the other one level, pairs of 20s on this job were coupled cab to cab) next to the guards inward opening door and took on around a dozen passengers to each of the cabs before running wrong line…I recall holding over a set of catch points and hand signalling to the driver to proceed over them…back into our terminal station (there was no room to move and I had to ask an elderly lady to lift the AWS handle) and leaving them on the platform before resuming our duties. A class 45 was dispatched wrong line to drag the DMU into the station.

 

BeRTIe

Edited February 19, 2023 by BR traction instructor

[The Johnster]

We had a driver at Canton who was not only a rabid speed merchant but mostly drunk as well; I had an absolutely terrifying run to Hereford with him in a brake van on a 45mph train, actually a class 8 so timed for 35mph.  Secondman reckoned we were doing 80 down the banks in places and the wagons were certainly bouncing about a bit.  He was willing to back me up if I’d made a complaint about it.  
 

The errant driver was sacked not long after this after taking the downside pilot at Cardiff General, an 08 with a raft of NPCCS behind out through the trap points off the ‘strawberry sidings’ by the old panel box and demolishing the old West Box building, at that time used as classrooms for training new intake guards.  Luckily this happened when the building was empty.  Also luckily the demolished pile of bricks prevented the loco from rolling down the bank or making its way down the path and out on to the busy Clare Road!
 

Good riddance, a short tempered unpleasant individual that nobody liked, but he was an old hand in his late 50s and had been a problem for some time, which makes you wonder why action wasn’t taken earlier.  Apparently offered early retirement but was holding out for better severance; sacked, he got nothing.  He’d have undoubtedly killed someone sooner or later if he hadn’t killed the West Box.  He was an exception to the rule, and there was only one of him, but I don’t think even he’d have climbed around a tender to perve on anyone. 
 

There was, it must be said, a lot more opportunity for that sort of thing on dmus, and some would take advantage of it through peepholes cut into the blinds, but this is a different proposition from leaving the footplate entirely.  The blinds worked both ways and one of my drivers ‘got it on’ in the cab of a 116 with a sozzled lady passenger at Bute Road on a xmas eve, ho ho ho lucky so and so.  I had a similar experience on the mailbags in the van of a 120 coming back from Bristol one night, all part of the service, madam, no extra charge. 

 

One night on the up Peterborough Parcels at Newport, riding shotgun front cab with the driver, a middle-aged couple made their way towards the end of the platform and proceeded to indulge in a knee-trembler against the wall of the buffet kitchen, silhouetted but it was obvious.  When they’d finished, they walked back towards the footbridge arm in arm, and I tapped the horn in appreciation for the entertainment.  To their not inconsiderable credit, both promptly took a bow!

 

I have certainly seen 08 deadman’s pedals chocked with rail chair keys; they were in a footwell cutout and easily chocked, a feature particular to 08s and not the best bit of design I’ve ever seen.  The usual situation on other locos was a clear space under the desk to make chocking harder, with a sloping surface to the underside of the desk.   On an 08, you sat sideways with your back to the side window. 

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, BR traction instructor said:

Every depot had its resident romancer…ours regularly told a tale of a cruise on the QE2 and whilst approaching Southampton on the return the captain was taken ill. Apparently, an announcement was made over the tannoy for this BR driver to come and navigate the channel/berth the ship. If you believe that? 🙄🙄🙄😀😀😀

 

 

It was planes with Flying Officer Bat, the resident fantasist at Canton, and on the day that the British prototype Concorde was to make it’s highly publicised first test flight from Filton, there was a tannoy announcement ‘would driver Bill S****field please report to the roster clerk for taxi to Filton as Brian Trubshawe (the test pilot) has phoned in sick!’.

 

One thing I will say for fantasists is that they are great company on long boring night turns.  One chap I worked with (after the railway), when he found out my interest claimed to have been asked to fire KGV on the up Riviera after the booked fireman had collapsed and been taken off at Swindon, half an hour late with pressure dropping and of course 5 minutes early into Paddington.  When I pointed out that the Riviera ran up the Berks &Hants and nowhere near Swindon, he told me I didn’t know anything about railways!😂🖕

Edited February 19, 2023 by The Johnster

[Wickham Green too]

If he'd have told you there were engineering works on the Berks & Hants you MIGHT have believed that HE knew a thing or two about railways !

[BR traction instructor]

One of our old hands would terrorise young secondmen by middle gearing e.g. a 45/0 passing Chesterfield (in my case) at high speed before threatening to remove the trousers of/wrestling his assistant. As a group of young secondmen we discussed this and waited for said old hand to be the night shed driver before three of us wrestled him to the floor and removed his trousers before throwing them out of the window. He was screaming like a girl, saying that we’d held him against a red hot radiator pipe/burning him. The traincrew supervisor had just opened the notice case in the lobby to post the new roster when us three secondmen had to hurriedly vacate the messroom. The burnt & affronted old hand hurled the freshly brewed teapot full of hot tea after us through the door and it slammed into the roster case, hot tea and tea bags running down the new roster. Sack the bas@@@ds!!! he screamed at the TCS, sporting a very clean pair of white Y fronts, who was hurrying to see what the commotion was.

 

BeRTIe

Edited February 19, 2023 by BR traction instructor

[Michael Hodgson]

3 hours ago, russ p said:

 

There was a 100mph  temporary speed restriction on a bridge at Brotton and line speed was only 20 .

 

 

Doesn't seem to be much point in a 100mph TSR with that line speed.

[Peter Eaton]

Hello,

DSD “chocked” on the class 08

Can this please be explained.

Thanks,

Peter

[Wickham Green too]

38 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Doesn't seem to be much point in a 100mph TSR with that line speed.

Maybe the line speed was 'only' 200 !

[AY Mod]

3 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

I turned into the narrow leafy lane that led down to the lineside and there was another car.  I sat and waited a few minutes but got the distinct impression it wasn't going to move so I flashed the headlights - to reveal what looked like the head of someone in the back seat, then another head appeared.  I flashed the lights a couple more times and sat back and waited - the next thing that happened was that a stark naked bloke got out of the back of the car and into the drivers's seat so, in as a matter of good taste as anything else, I turned off my lights and reversed clear of the entrance to the lane.  Eventually the other car moved

 

I thought that tale was going to take a different turn!

[DY444]

10 hours ago, Markwj said:

I think it can be true of any profession stories are embellished and exaggerated as they are retold over time. I was told a story many years ago about an engine which wouldn't come out of a tunnel so its paint wouldn't get ruined so it was bricked in- now that was definitely true!  

 

Agreed.  All major industries/professions have their share of true, true but embellished, and completely fabricated stories. 

 

It is sometimes hard to tell the difference though.  For instance there are things I witnessed during my BT days which I simply wouldn't have believed if I hadn't seen them with my own eyes.  Some others which have gone down in BT folklore are, I'm fairly certain, made up.  I have no doubt at all the same is true of the railway.

[darrel]

Some of the things I've seen in my time in the railway you simply wouldn't belive. 

But yes you do get the odd fantasist. We had one guard who told the story of how he and his brother had been flying to Cape Canaverel to fix the space shuttle because they had designed it 🙄. On the way there they were talking to the pilot, the pilot asked him where he worked, he told the pilot what depot it was. The pilot replied "oh yes I know it well when we see that depot we turn left for Glasgow Airport!" 🤔🙄

Same guard was according to himself, in a band with Eric Clapton, had a vidio recorder that could be set with a remote control from 20 miles away and had a gas power television. How this lunatic ever got a job in the railway is beyond me.

[Dagworth]

3 hours ago, Peter Eaton said:

Hello,

DSD “chocked” on the class 08

Can this please be explained.

Thanks,

Peter

The DSD (Driver's Safety Device - colloquially the "Deadman's pedal") on an 08 can be wedged down with a block of wood or similar so that the driver does not have to keep his or her foot on it all the time. Makes it a lot easier to move around the cab so you can see better. Also stops your foot aching! 

 

It used to be a reasonably common practice to chuck the driver's bag on the pedal on mainline locos, which is why vigilance devices were added where the pedal had to be released and reset every now and then. You can't do that on an 08 as the pedal is under the control pedestal on either side and the gap above it is only enough for a boot toe. Thus a wooden chair key is exactly the right size to chock the pedal down :)

 

Andi

[The Johnster]

2 hours ago, Peter Eaton said:

Hello,

DSD “chocked” on the class 08

Can this please be explained.

Thanks,

Peter

 

Sorry, Peter, slipped into jargonese a bit there.  All diesel and electric locomotives and multiple units, everywhere on the planet TTBOMK, have a 'deadman's' pedal or handle, sometimes both.  The driver has to keep pressure on the pedal or squeeze the handle, or the loco will stop automatically (in fact he has a few seconds to reset it before the power is cut off and the brake is applied automatically).  The idea is that, should he for any reason become incapacitated at the controls while alone in the cab, or slumped so that his secondman cannot move him, the train will stop automatically because a minor nuiscance is better than a major disaster.  This is the DSD, Driver's Safety Device.  It is automatically engaged when the loco is in forward or reverse 'gear', but can be overridden by putting the loco into 'engine only' 'neutral' mode, or by a lever on the secondman's side of the cab out of the driver's reach, which can be held against spring pressure to isolate the device.  In this way it is impossible for the loco to proceed under power with nobody in the cab.

 

On an 08 shunting engine, the controls are arrange so that the loco can be driven from either side of the cab, with the reverser, power bar, and brakes all being connected by rodding under the desk, so if you move one, the corresponding control the other side moves as well, which is great fun when you want to knock somebody's elbow off the desk...  An 08's control desk comes down to the cab floor, more a box than a desk, and there is a cut-out at the bottom into which the driver's foot fits, and it is here  that the deadman's pedal is located on these engines.  As there is not much room, enough for the driver's boot and the pedal, it is not difficult to use something to wedge, or 'chock', the deadman's in the position it would be with the driver's foot on it.  Commonly used items are rail keys (the wooden blocks that hold bullhead rail in the rail chairs), stones, bricks, old tea cans, biscuit tins, and so on.  Should authority appear on the scene, it can easily be kicked out of the way and out the door, but of course sometimes men were caught because they'd left the cab with the chock in place

 

Now, chocking the deadman's in this way is A Very Naughty Thing To Do Indeed.  I would never do it, and disapproved of anyone else doing it, but the driver is in charge of the locomotive and I had no right as a guard, traffic department, to interfere in loco department affairs, and drivers were not backward in coming forwart in pointing this out!  Shunting duties on 08s were often single manned with the driver alone, unwatched, and unsupervised in the cab for long periods, and he frequently had to move across the cab to be able to see the shunter on the ground.  If he could do this quickly enough, release the pedal on one side of the cab and get to the other side to depress the other pedal before the power shut off and the brakes applied, the deadmans would not 'go in', engage, and shut off the power, but he couldn't always make it in time.  The loco would come to a stand, and the deadman's circuit had to be reset, which the loco had to be in 'engine only' to do.  Time would be wasted, and everybody wants to finish the job and go home early, or break for the next cuppa.  So everybody is shouting at our driver...

 

You can see the temptation, can't you?  Chocking the deadman's pedal means you can cross the cab at your ease, the loco keeps running, the job is uninterrupted, it's a yard or dock pilot job, you're not going fast, nobody will be hurt, nobody's watching in this remote corner of the railway, anyway, what harm can it do?  It is human nature that if there's an easy but illegal way of doing a job, that way will be commonly used by some men, who see no harm in it so long as they get away with it, and they might well do so for many years.  They don't see it as pushing their luck. just as their normal way of doing their jobs.

[Wickham Green too]

4 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Shunting duties on 08s were often single manned with the driver alone, ... he frequently had to move across the cab to be able to see the shunter on the ground.  If he could do this quickly enough, release the pedal on one side of the cab and get to the other side to depress the other pedal before the power shut off and the brakes applied, the deadmans would not 'go in', engage, and shut off the power, but he couldn't always make it in time.  ...

Sounds like it could / should have been redesigned to give him a few more seconds !

[Michael Hodgson]

11 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Sounds like it could / should have been redesigned to give him a few more seconds !

The official view would be that it should have been redesigned so he couldn't get away with chocking it = requiring it to be released and re-applied every so often would make it a lot harder to defeat.

[The Johnster]

We had a few in the guard's intake at Canton in the early 70s, my own access to the job, who really were a liability, and proof that the standard of passing out of rules and regs was abysmally low because the inspectors were told to make it like that so that the staffing problem could be overcome, not that you'd ever have got anyone to admit that.  New guards were taken on at that time because over the previous couple of years the 'company' had intended to eliminate them on fully fitted trains without brake vans, which were coming into increasing use then.  The unions had successfully negotiated a settlement which allowed guards to travel aboard the loco in the rear cab, but a lot of the old hands had been offered redundancy deals and already jumped ship believing there was no future for them.  Hence the 'off the streets' intake.

 

How some of these characters were passed out on rules and regs even in these circumstances was beyond me.  We had one, 'Tojo', who put Grangetown ground frame back with the train halfway over it because somebody had shouted at him to 'hurry up'.  There was 'Harpic', who would drive you clean around the bend, and 'Thrombosis'. who was a bl**dy clot wandering around blocking up the system.  These men were a danger to themselves and everyone else, and had been weeded out for one infraction or another within about a year, but then there were more intakes and new idiots.  Most of us adapted well to the job, which was not exactly difficult, and enjoyed it, but these fools tarred us all with the same brush for a while.  Thrombosis would not work in a brake van, only 'back cab', where he would sleep; he was probably safest in that condition. 

 

We were required to protect trains in rear if we had a failure or an incident out on the road, and the thought of protection if another line was blocked relying on any of these characters was chilling.  They should never have been passed out to do the job; I don't know how Harpic managed his written test, as he was pretty much completely illiterate, though he claimed his parents were married...

 

Passed out they were, though, and the poor drivers had to work with them.  No wonder we were resented by some men until we'd proved ourselves!

 

2 hours ago, darrel said:

gas power television.

 

Now, just a minute there, darrel.  When I was seven years old, the summer of 1959, we went on a camping holiday to Porthcawl, 'Happy Valley' at Wig Fach to be exact.  There was a field for tents next to the big caravan site, and this is where we pitched.  Of course, as kids do, I ended up playing with the kids in the caravans, and got invited into one for tea.  This was my first introduction to the delights of Calor Gas, and I was much impressed.  The caravan's cooking, heating, and lighting were all powered by this wondersubstance from the bottle outside, and when I went 'home' to the tent I enthusiastically extolled it's virtues to my 'rents. 

 

Now, before we go any further, let my comment that it is IMHO reasonable for a seven year old child to implicitly trust it's parents, and anything/everything they tell you.  Allow me to introduce my mother to the story...  'oh, yes', she said, completely straight faced and with a look of utter honesty and trustworthyness about her, 'that's right, they even have Calor Gas tvs'.  Now, this made perfect sense to me, people in caravans or boats, or poor people who couldn't afford the electric, would be able to use gas televisions.  They wouldn't be as good as our proper electric one, of course, but the gas flame would provide the light for you to see the picture with and the sound would be radio anyway, so...  I will say, in her defence, that now I have reached adulthood myself I am very much of the view that there is no point in having children if you can't play with their heads a llttle bit!

 

I believed implicitly and absolutely in gas television for about four years after that, and was in secondary school by the time my kind and sympathetic 'friends' put me right, without any mockery or laughter at all, yeah, right.  So when Dave Setchfield told me they were having a gas fridge delivered, of course, I was having none of it, what you think I am, stupid...

[The Johnster]

22 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

The official view would be that it should have been redesigned so he couldn't get away with chocking it = requiring it to be released and re-applied every so often would make it a lot harder to defeat.

 

Exactly.  Modern DSD devices have to be reset at regular intervals anyway, so there is no point in attempting to override them in this or any other way.  This sort of technology was being trialled back in my time, the 70s, and I remember working back up from Llanelli on a 'Western' that had a buzzer every 50 seconds requiring the driver to cancel the AWS, and one to reset the DSD every 40 seconds.  To add to the fun, the power handle made a sort of 'droinggggg' comedy noise whenever it was shut off, and an odd random terrified squeak that we never got to he bottom of.  The train came to a stand halfway up Stormy Bank, my poor driver with his head in his hands sobbing and me cracked up laughing; he'd had all he could stands and he couldn't stands any more, Olive, ke ke ke ke ke!  He let me drive the rest of the way back to Canton under supervision, cancelling the noises for me; that and driving were too much to bear for an old hand steam man!  Bloke called Johnny Bedell, lovely chap and huge fun to work with, but lived on his nerves a bit, high blood pressure, red face, bulging eyes, I thought he was gonna kark it on Stormy that day!

[SM42]

Interesting one with DVD was that it would always go off at the same place approaching Coventry on the up. 

 

As a regular ops departmemt Autumn duty at the time we were sent out to cab ride the first Coventry every morning and report any locations that caused problems with adhesion. 

 

I hadn't paid much attention to the DVD, letting the driver do his thing ) and enjoying my cushy number that guaranteed 2 hours overtime every day) until one driver mentioned that the  supposedly random alarm  will go off when we reach a certain point. 

 

Sure enough it did. Every day without fail, at the same place. 

 

We had our fair share of fantasists and those who would regale us with amusing stories. 

 

How much the latter had developed from the reasonably mundane but a little  out of the ordinary into a you couldn't write it comedy sketch who knows, but most of them were plausible if not 100% true. 

 

 

Andy

[JimC]

I think everyone who has written books or magazine articles knows the temptation to use a good story that has slightly dubious provenance or has been exaggerated just a tad. Lets face it we've all come across tales that have grown in the telling.  And its also going to be the case that not every story told in the first person actually happened to that individual. 

As for Tuplin: well he definitely has, shall we say, a weakness for a good story. The other one I take with a bit of a pinch of salt is Gibson's "critical appreciation of GWR locomotive design" where I've found a number of places where what he has to say literally doesn't add up!

[Wheatley]

Things I know to be true because I was there or had to deal with the aftermath or part of it:

 

Signalman C burning down his box by stacking all the painters' tins of paint and cans of paraffin neatly behind the stove, then leaving the stove in but with the dampers closed because he was doubling back onto days. 

 

C then trying to claim his now-melted telly back off BR's insurance. 

 

C, now tail lamp spotting at a nearby station while the S&T rebuilt his box, being beaten almost to a pulp by Mrs C when she discovered he'd moved all his stuff out and gone back to his dad's after discovering she was a psycho. He was rescued by the crew of a passing train who dropped him off at my station where the Railman and I hid him in the adjacent pub until Mrs C (who had followed on the next train) had gone and his dad could pick him up. 

 

Ex-signalman C, now demoted to the cleaning gang after a further unfortunate incident involving more trains than available block sections, getting sacked and then reinstated for playing football on the island platform of a station instead of cleaning it.  At that time our AMO used the cleaning gangs as punishment battalions (and wondered why the stations were always a tip), one of C's colleagues had been sacked for driving DMUs around a station instead of cleaning them. The last I heard of him C was an MS2 in another Area !

 

Signalman H getting away with having a telly in the box by producing a receipt from Rumbelows proving he'd just picked it up from being repaired. The date was , er ... smudged. 

 

Signalman P being reduced to the ranks for getting caught with a topless model in his box, followed a couple of weeks later by our SM making a valiant but unsuccessful attempt to buy every copy of Razzle within a ten mile radius. I got P's job. 

 

A PW technical officer denying responsibility for getting the Cowans Sheldon CWR train stuck on a tree (it was growing out of the four foot) because it wasn't on the drawing. 

 

The driver and shunter on a (no doubt chocked) 08 investigating a clunking noise by walking alongside it as it drove itself up and down a siding. 

 

Our local PW failing to round up an escaped bull by chasing it up the cess in a personnel carrier shouting "RAWHIDE YER B******D" whilst making appropriate lasooing actions out of the cab window. 

 

Being told to get to a nearby switched out signalbox with "as many fire extinguishers as you can carry" after our DI accidentally set fire to it on a care and maintenance visit. 

 

Driver W of Huddersfield topping 90mph on a Class 47 with a dead 101 in tow between Barnsley and Wombwell (linespeed 60) after a young lady at Huddersfield implored him to make up time because she had a job interview in Sheffield. 20 late from Huddersfield, something like 5 late in Sheffield after three of us ignored the regulating instructions and gave him priority over the single line to the detriment of everything coming the other way. Even Sheffield PSB cooperated to give him priority at Wincobank, which was unheard of. 

 

A signalman at Shipley bringing the job to a stand because there was a spider in his sink (admittedly a very large one). He was later the subject of an instruction in Leeds Rosters that he and another named signalman were never to be rostered in adjacent boxes on the same shift as their combined capacity to cause chaos proved greater than Control's ability to deal with it. Putting in single line working around a dead pigeon was only one of their achievements. 

 

 

Edited February 20, 2023 by Wheatley

[micknich2003]

One of the best yarns I have seen in print is an ex H&BRly 0-6-0T loco' hauling a train of 143 loaded tank wagons from Hull Saltend to King George Dock. According to the fireman (Story Teller) he spent more time shoveling ballast on to the rails then he did shoveling coal.

[br2975]

11 hours ago, BR traction instructor said:

Every depot had its resident romancer…ours regularly told a tale of a cruise on the QE2 and whilst approaching Southampton on the return the captain was taken ill. Apparently, an announcement was made over the tannoy for this BR driver to come and navigate the channel/berth the ship. If you believe that? 🙄🙄🙄😀😀😀

 

.

He was probably related to an old colleague of mine, who had previously worked on an African contract with Ove Arup.

.

Flying home to Heathrow, the pilot of the (then) 707 was taken ill, and the pilot's colleague asked over the PA for anyone with flying experience to come to the cockpit.

.

'Tony' had once had a flying lesson, volunteered his services, and performed a perfect landing sand instruements, at Heathrow - to a round of applause from the passengers, and a pat on the back from the crew.

[pH]

13 minutes ago, br2975 said:

.

He was probably related to an old colleague of mine, who had previously worked on an African contract with Ove Arup.

.

Flying home to Heathrow, the pilot of the (then) 707 was taken ill, and the pilot's colleague asked over the PA for anyone with flying experience to come to the cockpit.

.

'Tony' had once had a flying lesson, volunteered his services, and performed a perfect landing sand instruements, at Heathrow - to a round of applause from the passengers, and a pat on the back from the crew.

I’m surprised none of the crew felt competent. A commercial pilot I know used to take cabin crew into the cockpit to observe a landing so that they at least had seen one being done. (Probably against regulations, but …)

[PaulRhB]

There are quite a few tall tales but also some corkers of true ones. I know of a Tramm crew who arrived back with a cherry tree on board. 
 

The words of Alice Cooper in an interview come to mind, “ about 40% of the stories about me are true. Everything you’ve heard about Keith Moon is true, and you’ve only heard a tenth of it”

That accurately describes some characters I’ve worked with.