Confessions of a Canton goods guard

[Banger Blue]

I’m in that club too. Got diagnosed end of 2019 with a tumour in the tube between bladder & left kidney. Luckily the ‘Big C’ was so low grade it was more of ‘lower case c’ and it was caught very early on. One op later and it was all gone (along with one kidney) and every check since has been clear - I’m now on annual checks as opposed to every three months.

 

Again I can only reiterate what others have said, if you have any doubts, signs or symptoms get yourself to your GP and get it checked out!

[Wickham Green too]

Snap ! .......... it was my left kidney, too - and I'm now on the annual CT scan routine ...........                                            ......... but not getting complacent  -  the late David McCarthy was a good friend.

[The Johnster]

Ok, time for some proper confessions, the naughty stuff, and some of it indulged in by The Johnster.  Well, it was the 70s, there was a lot of it about after the 60s...

 

I've referred before in this thread to the 23.05 Bristol TM-Cardiff Central dmu, one of my link jobs and invariably a 120.  I was working this train one night when a young lady engaged me in conversation on the platform at TM, P1, the little bay by the Panel Box, the stub of the last of the roads approaching the original Brunel Terminus, then a car park.  She was a buxom sort of lass (I've always liked 'em with a bit of meat on 'em), and seemed friendly enough, so when it came to departure time she climbed into the van with me.  Turned out she was feeling horny and had had a row with her Bristolian boyfriend, which meant he wasn't getting any that night but it looked very much as if I was...

 

I was.

 

We managed pretty well on the mailbags, though we both got a bit dusty, and I gave the right away (buzz buzz on the buzzer) at STJ with my trousers around my ankles and her mouth distracting me somewhat.  This was the start of a not very serious but fun and energetic relationship that lasted several months, ending when she and the Bristolian got back together. 

 

I managed a pull in what was a very impressive time (according to my driver and secondman) on the Aberthaw Cement once.  As we were returning from Aberthaw and approaching Barry VoG up Home, on to protect the junction which had been set for an up dmu off the Island, an attractive girl behind the railings up the embankment returned my wave and smile, so I was off the engine, up the bank like a rabbit, fixed a date for later that evening, and back on the loco just as the signal was pulled off; driver and secondman were quite impressed!  Met her on the Island later and we had a few drinks in the 'Merrie Friars' followed by a stroll on the beach.  It was a warm night, she was from Birmingham and on her holidays at Butlitz, and one thing led to another on the sand... 

 

One of my Valleys Link mates, whose I'll refer to by his initials, DS, in order to protect the guilty, was the sort of bloke who thought with his d*ck, and had a penchant for married middle-aged ladies, preferably reasonably well-to-do ones.  I never understood what they saw in him except as perhaps a bit of rough, but he picked them up, or at least arranged to meet them later, while he was working; we had some stations frequented by such ladies, such as Penarth, or Dinas Powys, or Radyr.  He was basically a serial sh*gger.  He used to get into all sorts of trouble with them, dropping them after a week or so for the next victim, and we'd constantly have to cover for him with jilted lovers and/or jealous husbands.  I made the mistake of swapping turns with him once, should have realised I was being sold a pup when he took on my turn, the 'first Treherbert', the least popular job in the link, for an evening Rhymney-Penarth double trip, the 'last Aber',  He was avoiding two different women at the same time, one from Llanishen and one from Penarth (how do you chat women up in the time it takes to get from Cardiff Central to Penarth?), who were not best pleased when I turned up instead of loverboy and with whom I had to contend with, and a rather scary husband at Ystrad Mynach who took some persuading that I was not the droids he was looking for!  I ran into DS again some twenty years later, by which time he was working as a coach driver.  Balding, overweight, but he was still 'at it', and pulled on that very coach trip.  Legend.

 

One xmas eve, 1976 or 7 because I was on the Valleys Passengers, I was working with one of my regular drivers, AL, initials again to protect the guilty (!) on the Bute Road-Coryton shuttle.  This involved a 75-minute lunchtime layover at Bute Road, and there had been office parties, so some of the female passengers were a bit lively, leading to AL misinterpreting the term 'layover' with one of them in the cab.  In fact he had some difficulty getting her off him when it came time to drive the train, and she was in love and demanding marriage by the time she got off at Whitchurch, I mean detrained at Whitchurch, she'd already 'got off' at Bute Road!  She was a regular, and when the turn came round again she gave us both a very snooty look, which I thought was a bit unfair; I hadn't done anything and I wasn't the one who'd been behaving like a bitch on heat!

 

Then there was the middle-aged couple at Newport High Street.  This was on the 00.35 Cardiff-Peterborough Parcels, 4E11, which we worked to Gloucester and then worked the reciprocal Peterborough-Cardiff back with the same engine, a Hymek.  We were booked to stop for 20 minutes or so at High Street to load parcels and mail, and these two wandered on to the platform from the footbridge, walked ahead of the train to a little alcove, the goods entrance to the Buffet, he dropped his trousers and underpants, she leaned back against the door, lifted her skirt and dropped her knicks, and they proceeded with a knee-trembler.  We had a grandstand view of proceedings from the loco, and they must have been aware of this but it seemed not to bother them.  When they'd finished, sorted out their clothes, and began to amble back towards the footbridge, my driver blew the horn at them in appreciation, and, to their not inconsiderable credit, they took a bow!  Now that, I thought, was class!

 

Newport, specifically the signal on the SWML down relief at Maindy Jc, was the location for an exhibitionist lady who lived in a flat with a window facing the railway on Chepstow Road.  If you were held at this signal, which was not uncommon as traffic from the Hereford road was sometimes given priority and parcels trains used the platform on that side of the station, she'd appear naked in the window and do a bit of bump'n'grind or .  Apparenty, one of the Ebbw Jc boys worked out the house number and called round; a bloke answered the door and that was pretty much the end of that...

 

 

[Nick Gough]

Ooh er, missus!

 

Looks like we have the plot for a new Robin Askwith film!

[The Johnster]

Well, the thread title is ‘Confessions’…

[Enterprisingwestern]

On 11/05/2023 at 21:48, Wickham Green too said:

How on earth would you 'launder' a million coins without someone at least raising an eyebrow ??!?

 

Very slowly?

 

Mike.

[The Johnster]

12 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Ok, time for some proper confessions, the naughty stuff, and some of it indulged in by The Johnster.  Well, it was the 70s, there was a lot of it about after the 60s...

 

I've referred before in this thread to the 23.05 Bristol TM-Cardiff Central dmu, one of my link jobs and invariably a 120.  I was working this train one night when a young lady engaged me in conversation on the platform at TM, P1, the little bay by the Panel Box, the stub of the last of the roads approaching the original Brunel Terminus, then a car park.  She was a buxom sort of lass (I've always liked 'em with a bit of meat on 'em), and seemed friendly enough, so when it came to departure time she climbed into the van with me.  Turned out she was feeling horny and had had a row with her Bristolian boyfriend, which meant he wasn't getting any that night but it looked very much as if I was...

 

I was.

 

We managed pretty well on the mailbags, though we both got a bit dusty, and I gave the right away (buzz buzz on the buzzer) at STJ with my trousers around my ankles and her mouth distracting me somewhat.  This was the start of a not very serious but fun and energetic relationship that lasted several months, ending when she and the Bristolian got back together. 

 

I managed a pull in what was a very impressive time (according to my driver and secondman) on the Aberthaw Cement once.  As we were returning from Aberthaw and approaching Barry VoG up Home, on to protect the junction which had been set for an up dmu off the Island, an attractive girl behind the railings up the embankment returned my wave and smile, so I was off the engine, up the bank like a rabbit, fixed a date for later that evening, and back on the loco just as the signal was pulled off; driver and secondman were quite impressed!  Met her on the Island later and we had a few drinks in the 'Merrie Friars' followed by a stroll on the beach.  It was a warm night, she was from Birmingham and on her holidays at Butlitz, and one thing led to another on the sand... 

 

One of my Valleys Link mates, whose I'll refer to by his initials, DS, in order to protect the guilty, was the sort of bloke who thought with his d*ck, and had a penchant for married middle-aged ladies, preferably reasonably well-to-do ones.  I never understood what they saw in him except as perhaps a bit of rough, but he picked them up, or at least arranged to meet them later, while he was working; we had some stations frequented by such ladies, such as Penarth, or Dinas Powys, or Radyr.  He was basically a serial sh*gger.  He used to get into all sorts of trouble with them, dropping them after a week or so for the next victim, and we'd constantly have to cover for him with jilted lovers and/or jealous husbands.  I made the mistake of swapping turns with him once, should have realised I was being sold a pup when he took on my turn, the 'first Treherbert', the least popular job in the link, for an evening Rhymney-Penarth double trip, the 'last Aber',  He was avoiding two different women at the same time, one from Llanishen and one from Penarth (how do you chat women up in the time it takes to get from Cardiff Central to Penarth?), who were not best pleased when I turned up instead of loverboy and with whom I had to contend with, and a rather scary husband at Ystrad Mynach who took some persuading that I was not the droids he was looking for!  I ran into DS again some twenty years later, by which time he was working as a coach driver.  Balding, overweight, but he was still 'at it', and pulled on that very coach trip.  Legend.

 

One xmas eve, 1976 or 7 because I was on the Valleys Passengers, I was working with one of my regular drivers, AL, initials again to protect the guilty (!) on the Bute Road-Coryton shuttle.  This involved a 75-minute lunchtime layover at Bute Road, and there had been office parties, so some of the female passengers were a bit lively, leading to AL misinterpreting the term 'layover' with one of them in the cab.  In fact he had some difficulty getting her off him when it came time to drive the train, and she was in love and demanding marriage by the time she got off at Whitchurch, I mean detrained at Whitchurch, she'd already 'got off' at Bute Road!  She was a regular, and when the turn came round again she gave us both a very snooty look, which I thought was a bit unfair; I hadn't done anything and I wasn't the one who'd been behaving like a bitch on heat!

 

Then there was the middle-aged couple at Newport High Street.  This was on the 00.35 Cardiff-Peterborough Parcels, 4E11, which we worked to Gloucester and then worked the reciprocal Peterborough-Cardiff back with the same engine, a Hymek.  We were booked to stop for 20 minutes or so at High Street to load parcels and mail, and these two wandered on to the platform from the footbridge, walked ahead of the train to a little alcove, the goods entrance to the Buffet, he dropped his trousers and underpants, she leaned back against the door, lifted her skirt and dropped her knicks, and they proceeded with a knee-trembler.  We had a grandstand view of proceedings from the loco, and they must have been aware of this but it seemed not to bother them.  When they'd finished, sorted out their clothes, and began to amble back towards the footbridge, my driver blew the horn at them in appreciation, and, to their not inconsiderable credit, they took a bow!  Now that, I thought, was class!

 

Newport, specifically the signal on the SWML down relief at Maindy Jc, was the location for an exhibitionist lady who lived in a flat with a window facing the railway on Chepstow Road.  If you were held at this signal, which was not uncommon as traffic from the Hereford road was sometimes given priority and parcels trains used the platform on that side of the station, she'd appear naked in the window and do a bit of bump'n'grind or .  Apparenty, one of the Ebbw Jc boys worked out the house number and called round; a bloke answered the door and that was pretty much the end of that...

 

 

Funny how this post is attracting such a quantity of responses, you bad people.  Stop that at once, you’ll go blind (ok, then, just do it til you’re short-sighted…).

[Philou]

Will you be wanting a map with that, or can you find your own way?

[The Johnster]

45 minutes ago, Philou said:

 

Edited May 27, 2023 by The Johnster
Double post

[The Johnster]

35 minutes ago, Philou said:

Will you be wanting a map with that, or can you find your own way?

I could usually manage from memory, tx Philipe!  Tbh it’s only memory deze daze; following the radiation treatment for my prostate scare, the fire has been dropped, ashpan cleaned, and pressure has fallen…

 

Gives me more time for modelling, though!

Edited May 27, 2023 by The Johnster

[Philou]

25 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Tbh it’s only memory deze daze

 

I too, I too :(  and it ain't the beer (or wine) causing any droop ................

[Enterprisingwestern]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

I could usually manage from memory, tx Philipe!  Tbh it’s only memory deze daze; following the radiation treatment for my prostate scare, the fire has been dropped, ashpan cleaned, and pressure has fallen…

 

Gives me more time for modelling, though!

 

Also the glue doesn't get knocked over onto the bedsheets!

 

Mike.

[Matt37268]

9 hours ago, Philou said:

Will you be wanting a map with that, or can you find your own way?

Start off at the mountains and head south? 

[Philou]

....... into the bush?

[Enterprisingwestern]

9 hours ago, Philou said:

....... into the bush?

 

, or Brazilia?

 

Mike.

[The Johnster]

Don't go down the mine, daddy...

[John Besley]

Any more fascinating stories, one area ghat zlwsys seems to be hard to find is pictures of crew facilities on sheds, mess rooms, offices etc. They often get overlooked on models to

[C126]

Thanks, @The Johnster , for your tales.  It is good to hear 'the human side' of any work, as this is so difficult to capture in photographs.  Please could you tell something of how it felt to be on constant variable shifts - 'the human toll' - coping with horrible sleep patterns, balanced perhaps with the pleasure of being up to appreciate a sunrise, etc.?  Chatting to my train-crew when commuting, it amazes me as to (a) why they can not do the same work for a whole week, and (b) how they cope with waking at such varied times on days so close together.  So it must have been worse, I assume, for the poor old freight guard.  Thanks.

[Rugd1022]

This thread is definitely right up the junction... 😉

 

[The Johnster]

The hours certainly took a toll, and of course the lower links had more than their share of the worst of them.  But, unlike today, you would work a turn for a week which made organising your life around it a little less fraught.  You had to have a minimum of twelve hours rest between booking off duty and booking on again, and your signing on time could not vary by more than two hours either way between shifts unless a rest day or Sunday off intervened. 
 

The worst, to my mind, were the early turns, too late to stay up for and too early to reasonably go to bed early for, say between 01.00 and 05.00, with around 04.00 being really horrible, and the ballpark book-on time for the first-of-the-day Valleys passenger jobs.  A lot of freight turns also began in these small wee hours.  We had very little work that corresponded to normal shift patterns, and quite a number of ‘afternoons’ jobs that finished around midnight/01.00, so you’d get to bed about two hours later by the time you’d done tour house chores and had a bit of supper.  
 

Another casualty was shopping if you lived on your own, as I did.  Back then, supermarkets opened at nine and closed at five, meaning that if you’d booked on at 03.00 and finished at 11.00 desperate for sleep, you either had to do it on your way home or rely on expensive corner shops (most of which close about eight in the evening) or the chippie; not a healthy lifestyle and interruptive of your much-needed rest.  And very little was open on Sunday.  Weekday Rest Days, probably about a third of freight work, came in very handy in this respect, and sometimes you could do a bit of shopping while waiting for your back working or cushions home.  Most depots were a little away from town centres though, and time was a factor. 
 

Another pita was clothes washing for the solitary flat-dweller.  The launderettes usually closed around eight, and service washes helped but you might not be able to pick them up for a week, which they didn’t like.  So you’d take a chance to collect earlier if an opportunity presented itself, to find that they’d had your stuff for three or four days and not done it yet, a wasted journey.  
 

The 1970s world was not set up for single people on odd shift patterns living in carp flats with no washing machines!  It probably still isn’t in rural areas. 
 

The Company, to be fair, recognised these problems in the form of enhanced rates of pay for night work, Rest Days, and both booked and overtime Sundays, but the basic rate these were based on was pretty low; only drivers and signalmen got reasonable money. 

 

[Michael Hodgson]

You've also forgotten to mention the problem of getting to work (or going home) at silly o'clock if you didn't have your own transport and lived some distance away.  No buses at that time of night.

[The Johnster]

Messrooms varied, but were never particularly luxurious. Harsh buzzy fluorescent lighting, hard chairs, tables, a water boiler over a sink, and a Baby Belling were par for the course, and noisy card schools passed the time but made it impossible to get any shut-eye.  Decoration was page 3 girls and soft porn glossies.  Arrival at Gloucester or Hereford with no back working after the last cushions had gone (down sleeper and York TPO respectively) meant long waits until the first morning cushions, slumped over the table trying to rest your eyes, the hours dragging interminably and boredom setting in.  
 

They were large and airy at modern depots, Margam excepted, that was a bit of a rathole, so was Landore come to think of it, and tended to be be gloomy rooms at stations and older depots like Gloucester.  Llanelli was in the old goods shed, lovely old building and very modellable, can’t remember Carmarthen off-hand, or Ebbw Jc come to that.  Newport and Swansea were holed away upstairs in the station buildings.  Swindon was a separate cabin to the west of the station, tucked into the curve of the Gloucester branch, and it’s walls were completely covered in softporn, everywhere you looked you could see what she’d ‘ad for breakfast…

 

There was always a good supply of this stuff, Playboy, Pebthouse, and their ilk.  We had first-class passengers to thank for this, dirty ‘stards  They’d buy them in station bookstands to ‘read’ on the journey and then be scared to take them home in case the missis found them, leaving them for whoever went through the train closing the windows for the carriage washers.  At least Playboy would have some good reading in it…

 

Canton had it’s own separate messroom for

it’s own men for some reason.  Visiting crews used the big messroom upstairs but ours was a miserable little box on the ground floor at the west end of the admin block, and every bit as bleak as it sounds. The windows were high on the walls; we weren’t allowed to look at the world outside. I don’t remember a hot water boiler or cooker, I think we had to go upstairs for this, just a square plain room with a telephone.  A spare shift might mean six hours or so sitting in this torture chamber, at the end of which your brain had turned to curds; you’d lost the will to live after the first hour.  Doing nothing was much harder work than doing anything else, and you’d have preferred a real torture chamber where at least you had the thumbscrews to occupy your mind and pass the time.  Then the phone would ring; ‘ 16.00 spare crew, relieve Hereford men on the Albion-Waterston tanks, down relief, in five minutes, off Pengam’ and the torture would be over, til tomorrow anyway!
 

Passing the time was the name of the game, and we read, played cards, chess, draughts, cribbage (on home made boards some of which were exquisitely finished with polished inlays and brass or copper pegs)  tested each other on rules or road knowledge, or tried our best to sleep.  The air would be rank with tobacco smoke, which stained everything a horrible yellow.  Gloucester one year was overrun with moths, and when a Saltley driver opened his wallet, one flew out, which he never lived down; something like that simply ruined one’s life…

 

Arriving at your destination or relief point, you’d make your way to the traincrew foreman’s window or a phone that you could get to him, to report in, ascertain the position of your booked back working if there was one, and to give him the opportunity of using you for a back working if there wasn’t one.  By the 70s, falling traffic meant that these were getting rarer, booked workings being ‘caped’, cancelled for lack of traffic, and most, but by no means all, of the time, you’d be told ‘home on the cushions, lads’.  Contract block trains and Freightliners were pretty reliable runner, but the general merchandise traffic, still considerable, was haemorrhaging, and the writing was clearly on the wall.  We were wastefully employed and all too aware of it!

[The Johnster]

23 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

You've also forgotten to mention the problem of getting to work (or going home) at silly o'clock if you didn't have your own transport and lived some distance away.  No buses at that time of night.

This was a massive problem for some of the Valleys men, of whom many had migrated to Radyr and Canton at the end of steam, and some Barryites as well.  Book off at Canton after 23.00, and that was your lot until the first morning trains unless you had a car, and many didn’t.  Five or six hours of hanging around uselessly when all you wanted was to go home, and the same if you were booking on at silly am and had to come in on the last the night before.  Saturday nights and Monday mornings were much worse, first trains being lunchtime and lasts about eightish on Sundays, and you might be further delayed by per. way occupations that had overrun and be messed about with replacement buses.  You could sometimes get lifts, but by no means all the time, or reliably.  This made something of a mockery of the minimum twelve hours rest!

 

OTOH, there were some blokes whose home life was so miserable that they were quite happy with this arrangement…

Edited June 24, 2023 by The Johnster

[C126]

Wonderful little essay; loved the vignette about the First Class passengers supplying the 'wall-paper'.  Something which would be lost/ unknown to most.  Not surprised to hear there were no 'quiet rooms' at depots for those wishing to have a doze.  Thanks.

[The Johnster]

Thank you.  I am one of those weirdos who actually enjoyed essay-writing at school, and was fairly good at it; RMWeb gives me plenty of opportunity to practice the art, though I know I tend to ramble a bit sometimes. It’s nice to hear that folk are enjoying reading ‘em as much as I like writing ‘em!

 

I doubt very much if any of us would have put their hands in their pockets to buy any of this glossy softporn!  We’d never buy the London papers either; a supply of these from those involved with the down paper trains and their connections was considered normal. 

Edited June 24, 2023 by The Johnster