Appointment As A Fireman

Posted in Railway advice Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

In the February of 1962 I was 16 and had been out firing for around 9 months when I was upgraded from Past Cleaner to Fireman. Guildford Depot operated a policy of not allowing those under 18 to work nights (between 22.00 – 06.00) so on appointment as a Fireman I was placed in the “Old Mans Gang” which was made up of Drivers over sixty who no longer wanted to work nights at the end of their railway career.

Having a regular mate was a bit like being in a forced marriage; it could be heaven or hell depending on the personalities of those working together. The footplate is roughly eight foot wide by about six foot deep and as a sixteen year old you had to share this area with some one as old as your Great Grandfather for up to eight hours a day.

There was also the unique environment of working a steam engine which had never happened before their invention and will never happen again. In that the two of you on the footplate made the power, controlled the power and used the power. While a horse race owner can breed a faster horse, the food for the horse is given before the race, it could not win if the jockey had to hang over the nose of the horse feeding oats into the horses mouth during the race.

With a racing car a mechanic will tune the engine to get peak performance, once on the track he does not lie on top of the engine feeding petrol into each cylinder in the way a Fireman feeds coal into the fire, and this depends on how hard the Driver works the engine.

My first regular mate was a Driver called Bill Hedgecock, he was Victorian being born in 1898 starting as a Cleaner at Dover Priory depot on the date the First World War was declared on August the 4th 1914. He claimed that one of his Grandfathers, as a boy, met the victor of the battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington, in the 1840′s.

The old mans gang was also known as the cathedral gang, as the turns in the link were traveling shunting jobs around Guildford such as Aldershot and the nearby Government sidings plus Farnham the Bordon branch and Alton, Ash, North Camp and Blackwater plus the yards over the Ascot road via Sturt Lane Junction on the main line between Brookwood and Farnborough. Up the “new Line” via Effingham Junction, plus a daily freight turn to Leatherhead. The reason why the gang was so named was because on most of the trips at some point you could see Guildford cathedral. The joke being at their age they should not get to far away from it as they might be called up by God at any time.

Bill was an autocratic man I don’t mean that in a nasty way, most of the drivers of his age were used to being “lord of the footplate”. It had taken him 26 years to get his Drivers job which involved moving home from Dover to Guildford just before Dunkirk in 1940. Compared to the other eleven wrinkly Drivers who were in the link I regard myself as very lucky. There was the “Bear” whose nose constantly ran in the winter leaving streaks of snot plastered down the side of the cab and the tender, another one used to pee in the cab by the reverser, and when this came into contact with the boiler turned to steam and smelt like you were boiling kidneys on the footplate.

A regular job for a fireman, cleaning the smoke box, at least twice a day.

Then there was “Chicken Neck”, as one of his Firemen nicknamed him 1624, not the U class mogul rather he had a sixteen inch neck with a twenty four inch collar and reckoned he could take his shirt off without undoing the top button. Others merely grunted at you or hurled abuse if you did not lookout for the distant signal which you might see from your side of the cab first.

One rather pompous driver was known as the “Mayor of Bordon” who would sometimes draw a chalk line on the footplate from the fire hole door to the tender to emphasize which part of the footplate was his as the “Organ Grinder” and woe betide if the monkey crossed the line. You could get your own back of course; the footplate was a very dusty place, so when using pep pipe which worked in conjunction with one of the boiler injectors you only washed down your side of the footplate.

Having said that about some of the Drivers in the link were good ones such as Bill Smith and Tom Whare who would take the time to explain the mysteries of firing.

Bill Hedgecock was also a good teacher but he could also be a very dry old stick, I remember one day when we were standing in Aldershot station platform with a freight waiting for the signal when my parents who going up to London came up to the engine to talk to us. I was standing on the footplate as a proud seventeen year old. Bill introduced himself and a few words with my Mother.The signal cleared and we left the station. I did not think much more about the incident until I got home that night where I got hell from my Mother who said that while Bill thought I was a pretty good Fireman, my main fault was that I kept putting the coal on the fire upside down, so it would not burn properly !!!