大象传媒

It was in 1944 that I had a trip into the unknow. I was a fairly new fireman on the Southern Railway based a t Guildford in Surrey and my experience until then had been mostly work on the good trains and local passenger trains.
Bill Hall, my driver, and I signed on at 2.00pm as spare crew with hopefully eight hours of catching up on my swatting for the Driver's Exams, being always eager to improve despite the bombings and general turbulance of life at this time in Great Britain.
However, this was not to be as we were given a job. Our instructions were: travel "on the cushions" to Eastleigh Depot, light engine to Southampton Docks and there pick up a train-load of prisoners- of-war for Kempton Park race course that had been converted to a camp.
Having caught passenger trains from Guildford, Woking Southampton and Eastleigh we arrived at tthe shed at about 5.30pm.
We wer taken to the largest engine I had ever seen in my two years in the job; A King Arthur class passenger engine. To me it was like climbing a mountain to get onto the footplate a daunting experience for a comparative beginner.
Bill went patiently through the routine checks to be carried out: lamps, water levels in the boiler and tender, the stated of the fire etc. The fire doors were large enough to drive a car through and the the fire-box the size of a garden shed, or so they seemed to me at the time.
I began by raking the small fire to keep sufficient steam for move off shed and then firing a little at a time, it seemed to take hours to shovel about a ton of 'nutty slack' into the space beyond those cavernous doors.
Once we had completed the preparation of the engin and raised steam we left the depot for Southampton Docks. There we coupled up to twelve coaches and met the quard.
At 7.00pm we arrived at the jetty to be told that the ship would dock in approximately four hours time. The ship eventually dock at 11.00pm and the prisoners were escorted to the train by a large contigent of Army guards.
Bill checked with the local authorities about time, routes and signals and then caused great consternation when he requested an intermediate stop to take on water. It was reluctantly agreed that stop would be made at Basingstoke and we left the docks close to midnight.
All went well with green signals all the way and the moment we stopped, out jumped the soldiers with their rifles at the ready to quard every door on bothe sides of the train, quite a jump down into the six-foot way between the main lines. There they stayed on the alert all the time.
My mate and I attended to the business of taking on a full tender of water and then I had to climb up into the coal space to shovel forward the coal stuck to the sides. this was all carried out in almost pitch darkness with only a small gleam of ligh from the fire-box escaping the blacked out cab.
Then we were off again, green signals all the way as we rushed through Woking. I thought it was time to shut down the fire, it is easier to dispose of a locomotive once in the depot with as little fire as possible in the box.
We had plenty of steam to get back to Fletham where we had to stop and uncouple the train and moved away smartly to make way for the engine that was to tke them to Kempton park. No one at this stage wanted to be responsible for losing anybody.
We thought we had finished but no another job was lined up for us. Off to Wimbledon Power station the Southerns own electricity supplier, so we could hardly refuse. We had been working over 14 hours so we were not too chirpy, but we proceeded without incident, not even a doodle-bug.
We arrived back at Guildford at about 08.00am both very tired and glad to have finished a long day's work.
There were several occasions like this duiring the war but we felt that we were all in it together and glad to 'do our bit' whenever it was asked.

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