大象传媒

My new billet was up the hill on the East of the village centre where my previous home was; the local Grammar school was on the West, so when we were using the main school it could mean a mile round-trip twice in one day, often in the rain, with only a school gaberdine raincoat. No-one thought this and all the walking to and from the various other sites particularly arduous, as I have said.

I mentioned that everyone knew a farmer. At haymaking and harvest most people joined in. Those were the days of the reaper-and-binder, more suited to the relatively small fields than the big combines would be. I remember being shown how to lead the horse (a big Shire) that operated the hay grab; another exciting novelty. We would try and catch the rabbits that ran out as the uncut area of field grew smaller. Then there were the lunch breaks, with great baskets of home-made bread, cheese, ham and much else, with home made beer in great jugs. Harvest suppers were just like the ones you read about. So began the love of the country and its ways that has remained with me to this day. How lucky I am that, miles away in Hereford another child from Bexleyheath was also getting a taste for the country. A child I was not to meet for fifteen years or so, but who is now my wife of 46 years.

We hear much nowadays about tests; throughout my seven years at Grammar school we had not only the usual end-of-year tests but a test every month in all subjects. If we were not up to standard, or if we dropped five or more places in class in any subject we had to go on "weekly Report". The last time you saw that subject teacher each week you had to get him to comment on your week's work, the result to be presented to the Headmaster.

On games afternoon the main school pitches were usually in use, so we used the "Town Field" behind the old junior school. It was flanked by the Afon Gronw and could be very wet at times. I remember a huge puddle almost in the middle of the Rugby pitch; we called it "Lake Victoria". If the whole field was too soggy we would be led on a local walk instead in our ordinary shoes - nobody owned proper walking boots in those days. Nobody thought this was odd, either. Young children had Wellingtons, men had "gumboots", the rest of us had shoes, and that was it. The walks took us on country paths, up hill and down dale, through most wooded terrain. At times we crossed streams sidling along bridges consisting of a retired telephone pole with a metal bar about waist height to hold on to. Again, we simply got on with it.

I must at this point pay tribute to the way science was taught at Erith County School. Of course, we did not realize at the time how good it was because we had nothing to compare it with. We often thought that Mr Stones, the Chemistry master, must have been in industry because he always seemed to know a practical application of the various reactions. We learnt something of the history of chemical discovery, too; fitting things into contexts has always appealed to me.

Our Physics master, Mr Nelthorpe had written the text book we used. It included short biographies of leading scientists, and we, too, were expected to know them. Time after time it was dinned into us 鈥淚f you get stuck, go back to first principles". We also had to learn various formulae, and data by heart. All this has stood me in very good stead in solving no end of problems since. In effect, we were given a mental "toolkit". When we were in the third year one of my classmates said one day "Have you noticed that old Bert (our nickname for Mr Nelthorpe) doesn't actually teach us all the time; he sets things up so we find out". In other words we were experiencing "discovery methods" twenty years before they became the "In thing" and people made their names advocating them! Thank you, Erith School.

At the end of the first year (July 1941) I went home for the summer holiday, along with some of my friends. My mother's younger sister Kitty had married an officer in the admin. side of the R.A.F. They had either lived in married quarters or rented a house, usually a largish one as by now they had five children, John, Michael, Maureen, Patrick and Paul. (I came between the older two in age). At this time they were living in a large, I would guess Victorian, farmhouse outside Bramhope, near Otley in Yorkshire, the farmer now living in one of the farm cottages. Mum, Dad and I went to stay with them for a fortnight.

This was another new and exciting 'adventure'; it was a new part of the world for us and, not least, it meant seeing a whole lot of different locomotives! While there we visited Harrogate, Otley, Ilkley, Knaresborough, Bolton Abbey, all by ordinary service bus, as well as walking all the way to Almscliff Crag., a local viewpoint. This must have been a 9- or 10-mile round trip with a rise of some 300ft. Dad was 58, Mum was 54 and we did it, twice, in ordinary shoes; again, we thought it was a good walk, but nothing exceptional. I remember a boat trip on the River Nidd at Knaresborough, under the spectacular and often-photographed railway viaduct. The boat carried about eight passengers and was rowed, yes, rowed, by a beefy young lad. I guess the current cannot have been very strong.

We walked on Ilkley Moor; this was my first experience of thinking you have reached the top, only to find another, and another, and another rise ahead of you. It was also my first experience of the custom of adding stones to small cairns as you went past.

By this time Germany had attacked Russia, and seemed to be making rapid progress. On the way down off the moor I remember Dad speculating on when rather than if, America would enter the war. Little did we know that Pearl Harbor was less than four months away.

In September I rejoined school in Whitland. Few people having telephones, it was not easy to arrange for schoolmates to travel back together, so I was on my own, once. the train left Paddington. My parents were a bit uneasy; but I wasn't bothered - after all, the train could hardly get lost, and there was so much of interest to see on the way. I soon settled in again, feeling the usual pride in no longer being a first-year. (For some reason never fully explained, you began in the 2nd form and progressed via 3rd, 4th, Remove and 5th forms to the giddy heights of the lower and finally upper 6th, unless you left after taking the Schools Certificate in the 5th form). One of the new intake had been taught by my mother when she went back to teaching as explained earlier. Another shared my interest in railways, but not in quite the same intense detail as me.

Walford, the son of the house, and I got on well. He was studying to become what is usually called a "passed fireman" but locally a "passenger fireman", in other words a fireman passed to act as driver when required and in line for promotion to driver when a vacancy occurred. Except in very unusual circumstances promotion on the railway was always by seniority.

Not only did he have to know a lot about locomotives, fault diagnosis and so on, but also about emergency single-line working and the like. He would get me to read out the questions from a practice book and check the answers. Needless to say I found this far more interesting than most of what I was supposed to be learning at school. Even now, I can remember most of it. Just as sailors had to "Box the Compass" - naming all 32 points in order, so he had to "Go round the Wheel", meaning take eight positions of each crank, say where the other crank would be, and what each valve would be doing in forward, mid- and back-gear. I can still do it! He went to "Mutual Improvement Classes" where enginemen studied together. (This was widespread practice on all railways). Most railway work counted as a "reserved occupation" so he was exempt from call-'up. The only time he took his "tin hat" with him was on the "Landore Goods" turn, Landore being near Swansea and subject to air raids. (Only once did a siren sound in the whole of my two years there; apparently a German aircraft got lost trying to find its way home from Pembroke Dock, or so we were told. Nothing happened).

There was some excitement when word got around that Churchill himself was to pass through. The line was cleared, a pilot loco went ahead to check that all was well, then came his train, hauled by a spotless locomotive, No. 5040 "Stokesay Castle". The great man got off, appeared briefly in the station square, raised his hat to the crowd and was whisked away in a large car. I suspect he went to somewhere like Aberporth on Cardigan Bay, where, we learnt after the war, that weapons were tested, or it may have been to the anti-aircraft gunnery school at Manorbier.
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There was a tank warfare training school at Castlemartin, down Pembroke way, like Manorbier. We would often see trains of long flat wagons ("Warflats") hauled by two heavy freight locos. Because of the hilly nature of the Tenby and Pembroke Dock branch it was usual for one of the bigger Whitland engines to come on the rear as "banker", with much whistling to ensure a synchronized start. This meant overtime which most crews were glad of. Apart from a Westland .'Lysander" aircraft landing in a field to ask the way, that was about the sum total of war as it affected Whitland!

We had double British Summer Time then, which meant long light evenings for much of the time. (The object of this was to give war workers a chance to "Dig for Victory" in their gardens and allotments). It soon became my custom to rush my tea and homework and then go down to the engine shed. Nobody minded you wandering freely about. A boy with so much serious interest seemed to have been considered a bit of a phenomenon; certainly I was made welcome and regularly invited on to the footplate of a loco. It was quite usual for me to spend the whole evening on the yard pilot (duty shunting engine). Drivers would quiz me as to what the various bits were, as if I were taking an exam. They were so kind.

A memorable occasion was when we pulled out of the yard on to the branch so as to run forward and deposit a couple of vans in the Up Bay platform. The signal cleared; nothing happened. "what are you waiting for, boy?" said the driver. Brief silence while the penny dropped. "You mean me?". "You've seen me do it often enough - get on with it! " So I did, and managed to work up a brisk speed but handle the brake so as just to "kiss" the buffers when ,we made contact. I had seen it done so often that it did not seem specially difficult, and the Great Western steam brake was so easy to handle with precision.

After that I drove on many occasions. It did not strike me at the time but I was given a remarkable amount of responsibility for a 12-year-old, considering that I was only a young schoolboy; all highly unofficial of course. A brand-new loco, 6903 Belmont Hall, came in for coal and water and was parked about 200yards from the shed proper (it was only a small, single-road shed). The foreman told me to go and fetch it and 鈥渟pot" it by the water-column, so off I walked. It is quite a complicated. business starting up a loco that has been standing for some time but I did it successfully. It was such a thrill that I have re-enacted it in my mind countless times since. I well remember making sure everyone saw I was keeping a good look-out all round and generally doing everything "by the book", except, of course; according to the book I should never have been there at all!

We had school on Saturday mornings but had Wednesday afternoon off in lieu. Every day a big passenger engine would come down tender-first from Carmarthen or somewhere and spend an hour or two shunting milk tank wagons in the United Dairies sidings. Almost every week I was up on the footplate until the train was made up and ready to go off to London. I well remember how cosy it was in the cab on a wet day (lots of those!) with the storm sheet between cab and tender. How I loved that wonderful smell of hot oil and steam - I still do! People sometimes pour scorn on rail fans, and some of them do rather ask for it, but the steam railway was a way of life for generations of men, just as much as the sea, and nobody scoffs at the passions the sea arouses.

One day when Walford was firing on the Pembroke Dock branch it was arranged (very unofficially, of course) for me to ride the locomotive all the way there and back, 30 miles each way. To make it not-too-unofficial I was to buy a ticket in the usual way, get in a compartment right at the front of the train and at a given signal, nip smartly on to the loco, keeping my head down at certain stations. What excitement! (Looking at my schoolboy diaries I find it was on the 17th of June, the very day on which the girl I mentioned earlier was, unknown to me of course, having her fourth birthday.

One day the shed fitter said to me in his .South Walian accent "Put your old clothes on tomorrow, boyo; I've got something to show you". I duly did and was handed a large pair of calipers, a set of feeler gauges and was led down into the pit under our only tender engine, 2288. The object was to measure the wear in the cylinders, which we found to be slightly oval, and slightly barrel-shaped to my surprise, so he told me to work out why. I did, but let's not get any more technical! Apparently the wear was within limits so it did not need to go to Divisional Workshops at Neath for a while. Sometimes I would spend a session in Whitland West signal box, learning procedures, bell-codes and what-not. Can you wonder that I did not want to go back to Bexleyheath!

In that I, and one or two others were dissenters. In the absence of, shall we say, urban entertainments, many of the other lads found life not very stimulating and wanted to call it a day. As the bombing had virtually stopped with Hitler's efforts being largely diverted to the Eastern Front many parents went along with this. In the end the choice was either to stay but be combined with the local Grammar School, or return to Kent. As only about four or five of us were willing to stay on my parents and I reluctantly decided to go with the majority; in fact nobody stayed on. So ended a very interesting and very enjoyable two years, earlier misgivings notwithstanding. It has left me with a great love of the country, a fondness for Wales and, of course, a lifelong serious interest in everything to do with railways. Yes, it began with what would now be scorned as trainspotting", but look what it led to: the hardware, of course, civil engineering, history, social history, architecture and more.

I did not spend all my spare time with the railway! Towards the end of the first year my father managed to find me a bicycle" a B.S.A. upright machine. It was single-geared, as most of my schoolmates machines were. At that time I could not ride, so I had to push it home from the station, but I soon learned and enjoyed my new-found mobility. Looking back I am amazed how two or three of us, all on single-speed machines, managed to cycle as far as Amroth, Pendine and even Tenby, although there was much pushing up hills. When you are young nothing bothers you very much!

There is so much more I remember about those two years. but we've only got half-way through the War so I had better move on.

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