Confessions of a Canton goods guard

[Philou]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

I doubt very much if any of us would have put their hands in their pockets to buy any of this glossy softporn!

 

Ooh, I don't know ....... I wouldn't be so sure about that. I used to have a nice collection of soft-porn Playboy and Men Only, the one with Fiona Richmond in it (bought the first issue and the whole series after that), and I'd take them home too. They were pristine, not dog-eared nor with any stuck pages neither! And I suspect my brother AND my sisters would have a sly look too. I could tell if anything had been disturbed! Some of the non-porn topics were well worth the read. You didn't really think that ALL my well-earnt money from working in Bud's on a Saturday went into buying modelling things? Did you? Did you? ;)

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

 

You wouldn't want a map of that, would you!

Edited June 24, 2023 by Philou

[Matt37268]

12 minutes ago, Philou said:

 

Ooh, I don't know ....... I wouldn't be so sure about that. I used to have a nice collection of soft-porn Playboy and Men Only, the one with Fiona Richmond in it (bought the first issue and the whole series after that), and I'd take them home too. They were pristine, not dog-eared nor with any stuck pages neither! And I suspect my brother AND my sisters would have a sly look too. I could tell if anything had been disturbed! Some of the non-porn topics were well worth the read. You didn't really think that ALL my well-earnt money from working in Bud's on a Saturday went into buying modelling things? Did you? Did you? ;)

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

 

You wouldn't want a map of that, would you!

Being of a slightly younger generation for myself and my friends it was FHM, the Gail Porter edition in the summer of 1999 is still fondly remembered. 
FHM was a pretty decent read, there was always an interesting piece in there and someone rather attractive not wearing much in there. 
The jokes and stories were always rather good too. 

[The Johnster]

I meant nobody on the railway would have ever dipped in their pockets for these things because we had a pretty steady supply of them for nothing courtesy of the managerial classes in first.  I've never bought one, my father did and I knew where he hid them, then I gave up work and joined the railway...  I am sorry to hear that your younger years were so blighted by lack of quality free softporn that you had to actually buy them yourself, but I'm sure Peter and sisters were grateful for your sacrifice...

 

Playboy and Penthouse I reckoned had the best non-porn content, Playboy in particular coming in with articles of a very high standard of both writing and journalism, despite being American, fair play to them.  The British mags seemed to be focussed on what they reckoned were men's interests, in other words fast cars and fast boats, which as subject matter were a bit limited and already catered for by mags for those interested; Playboy was a bit more eclectic.  But anyone who said they'd bought it or even picked up for the articles was deluding themselves, tbh, nobody else was ever fooled for a minute!  

 

The cartoons were pretty good, clever and superbly drawn, works of art, but the jokes a bit stilted and American.

Edited June 24, 2023 by The Johnster

[C126]

There was an academic (female) in our library reading room a few months ago calling our holdings of such periodicals to study.  All titles, it appeared.  I was too nervous to ask just what she was studying them for.  These are notorious for the bound volumes being labelled "Imperfect" on the spines, library jargon for 'some parts missing without trace'... 😀

 

Edited June 25, 2023 by C126
Added clarification.

[eastwestdivide]

19 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 I am one of those weirdos who actually enjoyed essay-writing at school, and was fairly good at it

Is there a book coming from this series of confessions?

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, C126 said:

... library jargon for 'some parts missing without trace'... 😀

.... or 'some parts believed pasted on a railway bothy wall at unknown location' ... 😀

[rab]

On 27/05/2023 at 02:59, 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...

 

 

Will this bit be i the book :)

[John Besley]

1 hour ago, rab said:

Will this bit be i the book :)

 

Or are those pages stuck together...

[The Johnster]

Yes. of course, with full illustrations...  Mailbags are much more comfortable than they look, but just as dusty!

[The Johnster]

11 hours ago, eastwestdivide said:

Is there a book coming from this series of confessions?

 

Probably not; sounds too much like hard  work, tbh, and I don't like hard work.  Some people call me lazy, but I prefer to think of it as energy conservation...

[The Johnster]

Few comments and requests for more recently, which is most gratifying, thanks, chaps.  But, honestly, you've had the best stuff, and I really think this series has come to it's natural end.  Glad some of you've enjoyed it, and I've rather engjoyed writing it!  Spin-offs, an odd couple series starring Ivor Lewis (Peter Perfect) and Jack Setherton, the infamous rival drivers perhaps?  But it would have to be fictional, and that'd no fun at all!

[SHMD]

You could just write about typical days or workings.

 

You are a great read as you have a real talent for setting the scene and not distracting the reader with trivial/irrelevant data.

 

There was also a lot of useful modelling info in almost every paragraph.

 

 

Much appreciated and missed.

 

 

Kev.

 

[treggyman]

Hi

 

Thanks for what you posted.

I certainly used to look forward to & enjoy each episode as they appeared.....

Shame there'll be no more.....

 

cheers Bill 

[billy_anorak59]

On 03/05/2024 at 16:37, The Johnster said:

But, honestly, you've had the best stuff, and I really think this series has come to it's natural end. 

Well, that's a shame - enjoyed it all, and I even learned stuff!

Thanks, it was much appreciated.

 

There must be something left though - how about a Christmas Special, just to to sign off with? ( A-la 'Gavin and Stacey' ) That would be tidy...