This led to the creation of what was called duel links at steam depots, any steam driver could apply for a position as a motorman at an electric depot and would then carry on doing steam duties; unless required to cover an electric turn at one of the satellite depots. They stayed in the duel link until a vacancy occurred at their designated depot, they then would then transfer to that depot as a motorman. There was never any mixed steam and electric duties, because of the dirty nature of locomotive work, steam men were issued with overalls, and the grease oil and coal dust from their clothes would dirty the unit cabs and the Motormen’s uniform.

From 1915 when the first sections of the third rail electric system were energised, small signing on points for Motormen and guards were created where ever there were sidings for stabling units. These were at Waterloo, Wimbledon (where the railway power station was built to produce electricity for the trains) Hampton Court, Hounslow, and Strawberry Hill; once it closed as a steam depot. As electrification was extended across the former lines of the L&SWR by the Southern Railway between the wars, further electric depots were created at Effingham Junction**, Guildford, Leatherhead, Aldershot, Farnham, Woking, Chertsey, Windsor, Ascot, Reading and Portsmouth. None of these signing on points were very large in manpower terms compared to the steam depots whose passenger work they replaced.

There were 16 pairs of men in the duel link at Guildford steam depot that provided cover for around 40 motormen at Guildford, 22 at Farnham down to 16 at Effingham Junction**, 12 at Woking, 8 at Aldershot and only 4 at Leatherhead. While the dual link had no rostered electric duties, a driver on entering the dual link was allowed around six months on what was called “electric signals” to learn any roads that Guildford steam did not cover, plus learning where the gaps in the live rail were on steam routes, which was very useful if you had a large allotment!! The firemen in the dual link on the other hand were never sure of when they would be with their regular mate, because if he was taken off to cover a juice*** job, he would be lumbered with any other driver that was available.

There were many advantages to becoming a motorman, it could be a way of getting promotion to driver, more quickly than those who wanted to stay on the steam, and as those depots contracted with the loss of passenger work, it was a way of avoiding redundancy, the other advantages were not getting covered in oil and coal dust every time you did a turn, and you did not have to worry about a fireman. You could also plan your home life to a far greater extent as motormen had their own centrally based  list clerk who issued what was called weekly “buff sheet” that set the duties they were to do the following week, this compared to loco depot practice of issuing a daily alteration sheet only at 12 noon for the following day.

The weirdest thing I found was in coming from a 24hour depot at Guildford where you saw and worked with everyone at the depot, was finding that electric depots operated an early and late turn strict two shift system, so you hardly ever saw the other shift, it made sense as most passenger services finished by 01:00, and did not recommence till around 05:00. One result of this was that the “other shift” at your own depot was viewed with some suspicion; they were regarded as a funny lot, often referred to as a coco shift. What I could never understand about this was that these were drivers who were doing the same turn you were doing on the previous or following week.

Over the previous fifty years until 1967 motormen had got used to a different system, small depots, no link working, their own list clerks, different uniforms to the steam men, they even had at their own supervisors called Foremen Motormen based at Woking and Waterloo who would organise any cover of the train service by phone. The depot was run by what was referred to as the “blue Bag”. These were sent out each day by train from the list clerk based at Wimbledon to all electric depots detailing any work that needed covering. Each depot had a shift leader called a Leading Motorman who was paid around four hours extra a week to put up the notices, in practise anyone who brought the bag into the depot was expected to put the notices up in any case. The blue bag was returned to Wimbledon the following morning on the first service, containing all the driver’s tickets for the previous day, plus any other correspondence.

Electric mess rooms were little palaces compared to the dirty hovels that existed at most steam depots. Being owned by a small group of men, great pride was given to keeping it clean. Often any delay to a train at the start of service in the morning was caused by the cover man being too engrossed in polishing the mess room to realise that one of his colleagues was running late. Suddenly these mess rooms were swamped by the ex-steam men who did not treat the place in the same way, complaints were made about swinging tea cans in the room as any spilt tea stained the ceiling,

At Waterloo I remember there were three rows of tables that were laid out across the width of the room. What struck me was the form of apartheid that was practiced, the back row of tables under the television contained the ex Nine Elms men, leaning back on their chairs with their boots on the table. They were also known as the “cabin cats” as it always seemed to be same blokes. The next row of tables was used by the foreigners that were from the old steam depots such as Basingstoke, Eastleigh, Bournemouth, & Weymouth. The last set of tables, close by the sinks were used the motormen. This was not particular to Waterloo as, when being trained on electric stock in 1968, we had to go Victoria to look around motor luggage vans that were equipped with batteries so they could be used on the non electrified lines in Dover harbour, not that I ever drove one. The class went up to the depot mess room for a cup of tea, and I found three rows of tables stretching out in front of me. The Victoria signing on point was used by two separate depots one to cover the Central Division and the other the South Eastern Division, That is the old London Brighton & South Coast & the South Eastern. You could tell which table was by the two depots as the middle table had a selection of white enamel jugs for tea making used by Brighton men, with the other two tables being equipped with tea pots for the South Eastern men.

* A.S.L.E.&.F. Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers & Firemen

** Effingham Junction. Home station of Alan Williams who writes a brilliant monthly column in the magazine Modern Railways, he lived near this station for twenty five years until he recently decamped to the wilds of Yorkshire.

*** Juice. Slang term for electric current, live rail or electric trains.

37075 was built in 1962 and one of over 300 that were ordered by British Railways. It spent most of it’s working life at depots in the north of England, was withdrawn from main line service in 1999 and went straight into preservation. After being on various preservation sites the private owner sold it to a group of members of the Keighley & Worth Valley. One unusual aspect of this loco is that the nose ends are different, when it first entered service, both ends were equipped with the four digit head codes. With the growth of area panel signaling centres replacing the mechanical signal boxes, the requirement for head codes was no longer needed so the roller blinds were replaced with running lights. During the 1980′s 37075 was damaged in a collision, so one end was rebuilt without the headcode boxes. It is planned to use this diesel in the near future on some passenger services. For further information please go to the KWVR website.

If you’ve had any experience on the preserved railway circuit we would love to hear from you on our forums!

Thanks Bill!

The situation has not been helped by the fragmentation of this countries railways, the more mature readers of this blog may remember the very good British Railways adds under the slogan ” We Are Getting There”, whether a passenger being bounced about on joined track while riding on one of those horrible 4 wheel pacer series of units could believe such a claim, would be open to conjecture. However what I am asking if any our readers see a good commercial or advert for any form of transport that they wish the rest of the world to see, please feel free to share it with us on the modelrailways.co.uk Forums!

There are a couple of other ads in the same series, not quite as good but deserve a watch:

Following a growth of freight traffic on the L&SWR at the turn of the twentieth century, the company decided to build a large freight exchange yard somewhere to the outskirts of London, various site were considered before it was decided to locate it at Feltham. Work commenced around 1912 but was delayed by the First World War with the result that construction of the marshalling yard was not finally completed until 1921. This replaced a number of rather inefficient local transfer sidings with other railway companies such as Brentford . The new yard had around 15 sorting sidings for both up and down traffic that was fed by two gravity hump systems. After a train was left in the reception siding, a shunting engine then propelled them up the rising gradient to the top of the hump, where a shunter unhooked the wagons with a shunting pole, to allow them to roll down the track into a selected siding to join other wagons that were being formed for the out going service.

With the electrification of the passenger services on the Waterloo to Kingston and Hounslow loops it was decided to convert the steam depot at Strawberry Hill into a stabling point for electric trains, and move steam operation to a new shed at Feltham . With around 50 freight movements a day both into and out of the yard it was one of the busiest marshalling yards in the country. It was still a hive of steam operation when I passed out for firing in the summer of 61, The yard was laid out on a flat plain on the down and London side of Feltham station and the orientation of both yard and loco depot was roughly north east, south west. It was over a mile between station and depot and the walking time allowed was 23 minutes. On a winters day in pouring rain, with a sou’westerly funneling the wind down between the rakes of wagons that lined both sides of the footpath, made it feel the coldest and bleakest place on earth.

So that the staff could get from the station to the depot more quickly there were a number of bicycles left at the side of the footpath available for general use, if you wanted to take your life in your hands so to speak. I am not speaking of battered but usable bikes left lying in drifts at the side of pavements around a college town like Oxford, these bikes were freaks, like some rejects from a failed Quatermass experiment, very few had a saddle, so it made your eyes water if you tried to sit down, no luxury like brakes, some did not even have any tyres. Two bicycles stand out in my mind, one had half a drop handle bar, the other side being a straight piece of wood, and the other one had only one pedal. Its little wonder that after once trying this form transport, most of us decided it was safer to walk!

One turn I particularly disliked at Feltham was the afternoon shed shunting turn. After signing on at Guildford at 2pm I travelled pass to Feltham getting to the depot at 4 O clock. The engine shed spanned six roads and each could hold, under cover 12 to 15 engines,and being at open at both ends had the effect of working in a wind tunnel. Those engines having been in for a boiler washout needed to be moved to another road in time order for their next booked duty. Sods law being what it is meant the engine you wanted always seemed to be buried behind 5 or 6 other locos. This process entailed climbing into an oil encrusted inspection pit, stretching up to lift the heavy screw coupling over the hook of the other engine, then releasing the hand brake on the dead loco, repeating this process another 5 or 6 times until coupling up the shunt engine to move them. Besides being plastered with grease, coal dust & oil, it could be so cold in the winter, that I lost the feeling in my hands. Moving a dead engine causes air to be forced out of the cylinder cocks as the pistons moved in the cylinders, which sounds like being in a room full of asthmatics. Having placed the engine in the right road, the other engines were returned and of course all had to be then unhooked. Do this a couple of times and you soon lost the will to live.

At the time I started on the railway it was still the practice to be addressed by your surname by foremen or managers and the locomotive inspectors in their black macs and homberg hats were thought by some of impressionable 16 year olds as semi gods. Not everyone believed this of course and when Fred, a rather laid back passed cleaner from Guildford was asked by a locomotive inspector “well Smith what does P and D stand for, Fred looked puzzled for a second, then his eyes lit up and he replied “Peer and Disappear”.

The proper answer is of course Preparation and Disposal.

So what happened to Feltham yard? During the 1960s the railway lost the bulk of the local yard traffic to road haulage, town yards closed and were turned into commuter car parks, wagon load freight became an ever bigger loss maker, because of its large manpower and loco requirements to move, sort, and shunt it. The final nail in the coffin was when the late sixties railway reorganisation removed from the railways, the requirement to act as a common carrier, a hangover from Victorian times when railways had a monopoly of land transport. It could now refuse traffic it made a loss on carrying.

In May of 1968 it was announced that Feltham yard would close in December of that year, any marshalling of trains would be done at yards on other regions, not that there was much of any wagon load freight left by this time. Since then the tracks have been lifted and the site has become a sort of wildlife sanctuary, unless they get run over by young motor bike riders who use it as a race track.

What else is Feltham famous for? In 1964 a young lad called Farrokh Bulsara came from Zanzibar to live with relatives in the town. He went on to become famous as both a composer and a singer with a band until his death in in 1991. I don’t suppose this means much as I forgot to mention he changed his name to Freddie Mercury and the band was Queen.

Organisationally the new British Railways was managed by the Railway Executive which reported to the British Transport Commission (BTC). This arrangement led to frequent tension between the two bodies and management style tended to be a continuation of the old companies’ policies. In 1953 after a change of government the management of the railways was re-organised by abolishing the Railway Executive (and all of the other executives except London Transport) and making the six regional boards report to the BTC. The denationalisation of road haulage was not accompanied by releasing BR from having to publish its freight rates and remaining a common carrier and thus the transfer of goods from rail to road continued, accelerated in 1955 by a two week stoppage because of a strike by members of the footplatemen’s union, ASLEF. This strike was evidence of the manpower problems affecting the railways with pay levels having fallen behind other industries leading to staff shortages and high turnover. These factors led to the setting up in 1958 of the Guillebaud report on railway workers’ pay, This report recommended in 1960 a range of increases of pay as a result. However no attempt was made to simplify the complex pay structures which in many cases survived to privatisation.  The headlining of BR’s increasing annual deficits by the popular press also added to pressure on the government to take action.

The £1,240 million Modernisation Plan announced in 1955 seemed at first to be an answer to the problem by reducing costs and making the railways more attractive to potential customers both for passengers and freight. Considerable electrification was proposed, including the resumption of the Southern third rail electrification scheme ‘east of a line drawn from Reading to Portsmouth’. The East and West Coast lines were included as was London – Ipswich and branches including Felixstowe. In 1958 the plan was revisited owing to continuing annual deficits, the East Coast electrification scheme being shelved. The Western Region was in particular financial difficulty and panic timetable cuts were made in June 1958 reducing services on many lines to a useless level (eg one through train each way daily between Andover and Cheltenham over the former MSWJ line.)

Increasing government concern led to the setting up of a Special Advisory Committee under Sir Ivan Stedeford which notably included Messrs Beeching and Serpell whose later reports were to generate much discussion on the future of the railways. Another member was Henry Benson whose separate report recommended the reduction of Northern Ireland’s railways to the Dundalk (for Dublin), Larne and Bangor lines. A report on BR under Stedeford’s chairmanship was prepared but not published. It is surmised that it proposed increased financial support for a railway network not much smaller than that which existed in the early 1960’s.

The new Minister of Transport in the form of Ernest Marples was clearly unsympathetic to railways (possibly because of his involvement in road construction through the Marples Ridgeway organisation).  He reportedly attempted to halt the Manchester – Euston electrification south of Crewe, but as masts had been erected well towards London he was fortunately too late. Sir Brian Robertson (‘Sir BR’) was succeeded by Dr Richard Beeching (‘Dr RB’) as BTC Chairman in 1961 and then in 1962 of the new British Railways Board. The well known Beeching report with its accompanying maps spelling out the fate of many lines was published in 1963. Line closures accelerated and the change of government in 1964 was thought to be the saving of many lines especially in more remote areas.  However despite promises made by Labour in the run up to the election, closures continued under the ineffective transport minister, Tom Fraser. His successor, Barbara Castle, reprieved several routes including the Central Wales (Shrewsbury – Swansea) line but allowed closures not included in Beeching’s report such as Oxford – Bletchley and Bedford- Cambridge.   Her tenure as minister was marked by radical proposals such as re-financing the railways through the new Public Service Obligation Grant (PSOG) created at this time to pay for the ‘social railway’ and the setting up of Passenger Transport Authorities which were to lead to major improvements in suburban lines as seen on Merseyside and Tyneside. Her successor Richard Marsh, agreed to the Waverley route (Edinburgh – Carlisle) closure and later became  BRB  Chairman, possibly notable only for allowing steam excursions on BR metals.

The 1970’s were relatively quiet for the railways under both Conservative and Labour governments. Electrification (now on the 25kv AC system) proceeded steadily on the West Coast main line to Glasgow, and Kings Cross and St Pancras suburban lines. The carriage of containers gradually became a significant freight traffic. Because of the time taken to develop the Advanced Passenger Train, an engineering solution in the form of the diesel High Speed Train (HST) made its debut in 1976 revolutionising travel times on several main lines. This train was possibly the catalyst that later ignited the growth in rail passenger traffic. A negative action in this decade for which we are paying massively today was an infrastructure grant which paid the railways to reduce capacity by measures such as track singling and taking out sidings and loops. Parallel to this action was the very effective BR Property Board in selling redundant land from closed lines, stations and goods yards often making any reopening plans prohibitively expensive.

The election of a Conservative Government in 1979 did not have an immediate impact on the railways except for the divesting of shipping and hotels. However with the economy going into depression in 1981/2, not only was PSOG gradually reduced from 1982 onward, the ability of the BRB to borrow externally was reduced. However BR management under a succession of politically astute chairmen, Peter Parker and the two Robert Reids, were effective in maximising use of assets and developed a market led approach to the passenger business. Having relatively high fares this situation led to BR becoming by the end of the 1980’s the most financially efficient publicly owned European rail system with the lowest level of financial support per train mile. Unfortunately this also reflected the fact that pay levels of BR staff had again fallen well behind the national average and industrial unrest marked the end of the decade. Rolling stock replacement was starting to become a problem and in an attempt to source cheaper trains, experiments with a Leyland National bus based rail vehicle led to the 4 wheel ‘Pacer’ series of trains which are largely still with us today. By the end of the 1980’s BR had been ‘sectorised’ for management purposes into Intercity, Regional Railways, Network South East, Parcels and Freight. The government commissioned the Serpell report which advocated a further significant reduction of the railway network, but fortunately public reaction was  quite vocal and the report was effectively shelved.

The late 1980’s saw the possibility of some form of privatisation of the railways being considered at government level. Conservative electoral success in 1992 led to the Railways Act 1993 which enabled privatisation.  Three alternatives were considered, BR plc, the re-creation of the four big 1923 companies and separation of trains and track, privatising the freight business and franchising the passenger business as separate geographically based units. It was the last named option which was adopted. With the specialised services such as telecommunications and rolling stock companies, nearly 100 separate businesses replaced the BRB. Privatisation was hastened to ensure completion by the 1997 election, the track owning company Railtrack being one of the last. The incoming Labour government  did not stop or reverse  the virtually completed process but passed the Railways Act 2000 which replaced the Franchising Directorate  by the Strategic Rail Authority, initially chaired by Sir Alastair Morton.

One clear benefit of the privatisation process was the freight business which had steadily declined in BR days after the successive loss of fish, milk, newspaper and most of the postal traffic. A forerunner of the way things were going was the involvement of the aggregates company Foster Yeoman in specifying and obtaining their own main line locomotives for their Somerset – London mineral trains. The three separate freight companies initially set up had to be re-combined in order to achieve a sale to English, Welsh and Scottish (EWS) an American (then Canadian, now German!) owned company. Fairly soon other freight businesses took to the rails including Freightliner, Direct Rail Services and GB Rail.

A succession of accidents, notably Hatfield and Potters Bar, led to the spotlight being focussed on Railtrack’s professional and managerial standards. Financial controls were set in place to regulate the track charges paid by the train operators under the Rail Regulator (ORR) and it was the financial state of Railtrack that led to its abrupt dissolution in 2002 and replacement by a quasi – state owned ‘not for profit’ body Network Rail. Very quickly the new organisation decided to take back much of its maintenance work ‘in house’ rather than relying on contractors.

Yet another Railways Act in 2005 abolished the Strategic Rail Authority, civil servants at the Department for Transport (DfT) becoming the overseeing authority. This has led to a degree of micro management on matters such as rolling stock allocation and timetables.  The regional passenger watchdog bodies were abolished in 2005 and subsumed into a national body – Passenger Focus, responsible now also for bus and internal air passenger matters. Devolution has led to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all adopting a more progressive attitude to railways compared with England, at least outside of London. Fortunately we have had a very pro-rail Transport Minister in the form of Lord Adonis, sadly in the last days of the previous government, but Phillip Hammond, his successor has also shown a good understanding of the potential of an efficient rail system.  Passenger franchises now look like being let on a longer term basis, possibly learning from the example of Chiltern where considerable investment in infrastructure has taken place in a 20 year franchise. Whether British state ownership of operation will return as has happened temporarily with the East Coast franchise is a question for the future. Ironically much of our railway system is now owned or operated by French, German and Dutch state interests!

Rail passenger and freight usage has continued to expand and capacity demand alone justifies proposals for a duplicate (high speed) route along the London – North axis of Britain to add to the successful High Speed link to the Channel Tunnel. At the local level, Community Rail Partnerships have helped increase revenue on rural lines, many significantly. Sadly our railways have moved from the top of the European financial ‘league table’ for the least subsidy per train mile to the bottom as the most expensive railway. This led to the government in 2010 engaging Sir Roy McNulty to examine the value for money aspect of our railways. His report identified trends which have led to the situation and advocated a target of 30% improvement in financial efficiency by 2018. Measures suggested include devolved responsibility (particularly in the p.t.e. areas), closer working between Network Rail and operators including consideration of experimental vertical integration. He did not propose network reduction but advocated a more sensitive approach to rail fares. A Rail Delivery Group was set up to oversee implementation. A recent report by the Jacobs Consultancy for the DfT advocates reduction of franchises by six , including combination of East Coast with Cross Country and the breaking up of London Midland into electric (added to West Coast) and diesel sectors (added to Chiltern).

In conclusion one thing is certain, it is unlikely that the existing organisational structure of our railways will remain unchanged for long, but it is clear that government will need to have a more positive attitude to their future role in Britain than has been the case in much of the latter half of the 20^th Century.

Commentary – with the benefit of 6/6 hindsight!

The story of transport in Britain, whilst rich in variety, is not a totally happy one and certainly not one which fits in with the other achievements of the 19^th Century’s most powerful nation.  It is true that being a pioneer meant that we were saddled with some early ‘bum’ decisions -eg narrow canals, limited railway loading gauge. However compare the French decision to build the 150 mile Canal du Midi across the south of France, linking Bordeaux to the Mediterranean in 1681 and the abortive attempts to link the English and Bristol Channels. At least the Thames and English Channel were linked until the 1870’s by the barge sized Wey and Arun Canal. Where the government was directly involved, some strategic links were achieved notably the Caledonian Canal engineered by Thomas Telford.

It is worthy of conjecture to consider if the canal age occurred just two decades earlier, allowing them to develop more fully and had railway companies been prevented from acquiring them, whether the railways would have been as an important carrier of goods as they became. This was the situation in the Netherlands but the topography of the two countries is very different!  Had the development of durable road surfacing occurred earlier in the 19^th century, again it is probable that the impact of railways would have been less as by the 1830’s considerable progress had been made in the design and construction of steam road coaches by Goldsworthy Gurney and others, but their effect on road surfaces as well as the horse carriage interests led to their disappearance by means of very high turnpike tolls.

It is hard to envisage what the railway geography would be if there had been some degree of planning in building the main line network. Certainly there would be less duplication of lines in industrial areas such as West Yorkshire or South Wales. The focus on London would probably be similar to that existing today but probably with fewer terminal stations. Three separate principal stations in cities such as Leicester and Liverpool and four in Manchester and Glasgow certainly would have been avoided. We may even had better east – west links. On the other hand, would a planned system been as able as the private companies in catering for later developments such as the growth of seaside resorts? One area where the attitudes of the railway companies did affect residential patterns is the approach to London suburban traffic- compare the Liverpool Street and Euston based suburban services in the early 20^th century. The GER needed the cash flow after their bankers, Gurney Overend, failed in 1866, whilst the LNWR (the self styled ‘Premier Line’) seemed to regard commuters as an undignified necessity, possibly not to be encouraged.

Moving into the 20^th century, it is reasonably clear that the avoidance of nationalisation after the First World War was a mistake. The four big companies were just one of the options considered and it is unfortunate that the option of putting the five Scottish companies into a single group was not followed. We ended up with the nonsense of the Great North of Scotland Railway detached from its parent LNER group by about 35 miles of LMS main line. One aim, remarkably, was to reduce competition, even though there was competition on the network interfaces, eg London to Birmingham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, Plymouth as well as suburban systems in the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Thames Valley, Glasgow and Edinburgh. ‘Penetrating lines’ (eg the LNER around Wrexham, the LMS around Swansea) were left with the parent companies.

The fact that the new companies were private concerns led to the new Ministry of Transport becoming to a large extent a ‘Ministry of Roads’. Fears again of monopolies led to the railways being divested of their direct bus operating powers, but being allowed to have non controlling shareholdings in the regional bus companies with usually Tilling or British Electric Traction  being the other main shareholder (eg the Eastern Counties Omnibus Company was ultimately owned before nationalisation by Thomas Tilling 49%,  LNER 46%,  LMS 3%  and ‘outside’ 2%  – rounded percentages). This tie up with bus companies led to some early branch closures in the 1930’s but fortunately the railways did not carry out a major stripping of local services that some of the larger bus operators advocated.

What in 1923 had amalgamations been permitted with aim of competition? A Midland – GSWR working against a LNWR – Caledonian combination would seem obvious. A GNR- NER – North British merger would seem logical on the East Coast, but where would that leave the GER? An interesting combination would have been a GWR – GCR tie up which would have covered several major industrial areas. What about south of the Thames? Would there have been any possibility of trans- Thames mergers (eg LNWR with the LBSCR). What about the minor lines- the Hull and Barnsley going into a Midland based company, the MSWJ going into the LSWR instead of being run down by the GWR?  What is interesting is that the franchising process has effectively recreated in many cases the pre 1923 company systems which possibly demonstrates the logic of that size and shape of network in management terms.

Coming back to reality and the present day, we have a railway system with growing passenger and revived freight use. We are paying large sums for schemes to put back capacity (such as reinstating double track on several less important main lines), catching up with backlogs of maintenance while at the same time there is a desperate need to reduce costs as evidenced by the McNulty report. Whether we shall see vertical integration of track and train as advocated, at least on a trial basis, has yet to be decided. At last further electrification is back on the agenda with the London-Bristol/Cardiff and north west infills. Trans-Pennine electrification also now looks imminent with the huge increase in passengers (and overcrowding) on this key route. We should be moving toward a rolling programme so that electrification teams have continuous work thus reducing unit costs eg  Bedford- Sheffield- Leeds should follow on the current schemes – and for freight haulage, Felixstowe –Ipswich / Stowmarket – Ely – Peterborough – Leicester – Birmingham  should not be too far down the list. This would allow electrification of several passenger services (eg Birmingham – Stansted).  By this means we start to create electrified networks rather than separate electric main lines.

Concluding, one further factor is that the ‘micro management’ by the DfT of our railways is not an ideal structure for the future. A body absorbing the Rail Regulator as an agency of the DfT- not unlike the Highways Agency in charge of our trunk roads – might be an answer. However we should heed the warning of that well regarded railwayman, Gerard Fiennes who wrote in his autobiography ‘I tried to run a Railway’ – “Reorganise and bleed!”  Food for thought!

Brief Biography of Barry Moore.

Barry has had a long interest in transport, particularly railways. His first employment was as an experimental officer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough Hampshire working on heat resistant plastic materials. I remember at the time that he used some this material to make himself some brake blocks for his bicycle, They worked brilliantly, to improve the braking in wet weather compared with the standard rubber blocks, but were so hard they wore away the metal on his bicycle wheels.

He moved into transport in 1965 as a management trainee with the council run bus services at Leicester City Transport, moving to Plymouth in the west of England as the Deputy Transport Manager in 1974, and retiring as Managing Director of Ipswich Buses in 1996. His connection with the railways involved membership of the Rail Passenger Committee for Eastern England for 9 years up till its abolition in 2005. He was a founding member of the local group of the Campaign for Better Transport ( formerly known as Transport 2000) and is still involved with that group.

Our railways; their development and treatment by government.

Part 1 - The beginning and rapid growth.

When one reads the history of Britain’s railways, it becomes clear that compared with our continental neighbours, wartime invasions excepted, our railways have been subjected to more changes of government approach than most. Even the advocates of the 1990’s privatisation process now admit that they had got it wrong! What follows is a ‘potted’ view of our rich railway history focussing on the main events and this will not even scratch the surface of the involvement of the railway in social changes such as nationwide standard time, fish eating, development of national newspapers or even the adoption of the bar in pubs which resulted from its invention as a means of serving meals quickly to train passengers at places such as Swindon, Crewe and Normanton before the days of gangwayed carriages and restaurant cars. Similarly the major involvement of our railways in shipping, docks, canals, hotels, buses and internal air services is not covered.

Going back to the earliest days of railways in the 1820’s and 30’s, there was a mixture of promotion of local lines (eg the Stockton and Darlington, Canterbury and Whitstable) and major lines such as the Great Western (GWR), London and Birmingham and London and Southampton Railways. It was the latter railway that first raised the spectre of competition with a proposal for a second main line from near Basingstoke via Devizes to Bristol. This proposal was defeated but the GWR and London and South Western Railway (LSWR) continued to provoke each other territorially right into the early 20th century culminating in the construction of the LSWR’s Basingstoke-Alton and Meon Valley lines to block the GWR’s proposals for a Basingstoke – Portsmouth line.

Early calls for a planned system of railways as happened to a large extent on the continent fell on deaf ears. Some towns such as Northampton and Stamford were originally anti- railway but were to regret this attitude within a few years and still suffer now from being on secondary lines. Some then locally important market towns ended up on short branch lines from junction stations in the ‘middle of nowhere’ (eg Abingdon, Eye, Malmesbury, Richmond, Uppingham) resulting in those towns shrinking in importance and often in population and inevitably becoming rail-less by the 1960’s. Contrarywise new ‘railway towns’ grew where there were workshops and or junctions, some became large towns such as Swindon, Ashford and Crewe, others remained small with the railway remaining the dominant employer- Melton Constable and Woodford Halse are examples, both now rail-less. Landowners were powerful and we still today have relics of their influence such the Metropolitan Railway not being able to reach Watford Junction (for which we shall be paying over £100m for such a link in 2015!), unnecessary tunnels north of Audley End to hide the trains and ‘Lord Harborough’s curve’ east of Melton Mowbray creating a dogleg in the Midland Railway’s then Nottingham main line.

The Railway Mania years up to the mid 1840’s led to a plethora of proposals often in rivalry to other schemes. This resulted in Parliament enacting greater control through the Railway Regulation Act of 1844 which amongst other matters specified minimum conditions for third class passengers including roofs and seats! The Gauge Act of 1846 sealed the long term fate of Brunel’s 7 feet broad gauge on GWR lines but also prevented further nonsenses such as the Eastern Counties Railway’s fortunately brief adoption of a 5 feet gauge for their main line out of London and some 5’6” gauge lines in Scotland. The situation in Ireland was chaotic and 5’3” was in reality a compromise gauge specified in the Act.

Technical advances are made steadily through the mid-19th century in locomotive design, signalling, telegraphic communication and importantly the continuous brake for passenger trains. The Railway Clearing House, established in 1842, set agreed standards (eg buffer heights and couplings) to allow through working of trains between railway companies as well as apportioning revenue between companies for tickets and goods. In 1875 the Midland Railway abolished second class with the other companies following slowly, many reluctantly.

By the 1860’s the major pre grouping railway companies had established their basic networks resulting in many towns and cities having more than one railway station. The American example of establishing ‘Union’ stations shared by several rail operators unfortunately had few parallels here, Carlisle, Perth and York being notable examples, even though the last two were owned by a single company. Many companies were very territorial in outlook and managed to keep out competitive lines, eg the London Brighton South Coast (LBSCR) and the North Eastern Railways (NER). Contradictory moves in terms of competition occurred at the end of the 19th Century with the decision of the London Chatham and Dover and South Eastern Railways to form a joint operating committee because of the duplication of their lines in Kent, whilst the Great Central Railway’s (GCR) new main line from Nottinghamshire to London was opened the same year. One cynic summed up this competitive line as providing a new facility ‘by linking Lutterworth to London’; Lutterworth in Leicestershire being the only sizeable place to be added to the railway network by this grand scheme.

In coal mining areas competitive lines were built to serve pits, some larger mines in South Yorkshire and the North Midlands having three railway outlets. In South Wales the huge demand for coal exports in the 1880’s led to the creation of a new railway and dock system based on Barry. As the existing valley routes were already occupied by existing railways, principally the Taff Vale, Rhymney and GWR, the Barry Railway had to cross the valleys on impressive viaducts, most of which had short lives being demolished by the enlarged GWR in the 1920’s. The Hull and Barnsley Railway had a similar history.

Even in the late 19th century hopelessly grandiose schemes still were being promoted. The Potteries, Shrewsbury and North Wales, the Manchester and Milford Haven and the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast are three such examples. The first named of these opened from Shrewsbury to Blodwell, closed for thirty years and then part became one of Colonel Stephen’s light railways. The second named line ran from Pencader to Strata Florida on the line that the GWR later acquired and completed to Aberystwyth. There was also a section built near Llanidloes in mid Wales which never saw a train. The last example, the LD&ECR, was arguably the most successful, linking Lincoln to Chesterfield (not reaching either the first or last places in its title!) having a reasonable coal traffic and interestingly was supported by the Great Eastern (GER) in order to bring more coal traffic onto their joint line (GER/GNR Doncaster to March and Huntingdon). However it was the GCR that was successful in acquiring this line in 1905.

The Light Railways Act 1896 led to numerous small local lines being promoted. Many were never built but over the country there were a scattering of lines such as the East Kent , the Weston, Clevedon and Portishead and the Shropshire and Montgomery, which were among a dozen lines managed by Colonel Holman Stephens from his head office in Tonbridge. Other light railways were absorbed and operated by the major connecting company (eg the Tollesbury branch by the GER) and the North Devon and Cornwall Junction (Torrington to Halwill) which did not open until 1925 in Southern Railway (SR) days. There were also some other independent lines such as the Bishops Castle, North Sunderland, Derwent Valley and the Easingwold, the latter two remaining independent until their closure in 1981 and 1965. However the cost of promotion and construction of such lines led the major companies to become involved in bus operation, particularly the GWR, linking to places off the rail network such as the Lizard from Helston and our local GER Shotley service, in some cases to test the water for possible later rail construction.

The penetration of ‘foreign’ territory was undertaken in several cases by the acquisition and promotion of jointly owned railways. The largest example was the Cheshire Lines Committee (GCR, GNR and Midland) which operated in competition with the London North Western (LNWR) and Lancashire and Yorkshire Railways in the Liverpool and Manchester areas. Other lengthy joint lines which had quasi independent existences were the Somerset and Dorset Joint closing in 1966, outliving the other major system, the Midland and Great Northern Joint by seven years. On the subject of joint railways, it is of interest to note that the Forth Bridge Railway was a majority (75%) English concern, being owned equally by the GNR, Midland, NER and North British Railways. Newly opened coal mines just before the First World War in South Yorkshire generated a number of short jointly owned lines around Doncaster with a complex pattern of ownerships.

Although there was extensive competition on main lines with cities such as Manchester, Sheffield and Nottingham having a choice of three railways for travelling to London, a mood of cooperation had started in the early part of the 20th century with freight pooling schemes. There had been linear cooperation on the East and West Coast Main lines from their earliest days and the GCR notably became involved in the inauguration of many cross country trains in Edwardian times such as the ‘Ports to Ports’ (Newcastle to Barry jointly with the NER and GWR) and Newcastle to Bournemouth (jointly with the NER, GWR and LSWR). The Midland Railway was similarly well placed to participate in cross country trains especially with its involvement with the joint lines already mentioned. Inevitably there was more talk of amalgamation between companies. Such acts required Parliamentary approval. Although there continued to be small scale acquisitions (eg the acquisitions by the Midland of the London, Tilbury and Southend in 1912, and the LNWR of the North London Railway in 1909), larger scale mergers such as the 1872 proposal for the Midland – Glasgow and South Western and the 1909 GCR- GNR- GER proposed mergers were opposed in Parliament.

The First World War saw government control of the railways through the Railway Executive Committee chaired by the LSWR manager Herbert Walker. This helped organise the operation of troop and munitions trains and notably the supply of coal for the Royal Navy in places as remote as Scapa Flow. Locomotives were not only loaned to railways which had traffic increases but to the Army as well for which purpose the GCR Robinson 2-8-0 was adopted for construction as a standard war time loco for overseas use. Inevitably after a period of central control, nationalisation of the whole system was advocated especially with the Ministry of Transport being set up in 1921 under Sir Eric Geddes, erstwhile manager of the NER. However even though some preparatory work had been done for this move, reflecting the political mood of the time, the Railways Act 1921 proposed the grouping of companies into the ‘big four’. Anticipatory amalgamations took place in 1922 with the LNWR and Lancashire and Yorkshire, the NER and Hull and Barnsley as well as several South Wales companies with the GWR.

One negative aspect of the railways remaining in private hands was the attitude of government policy through the new Ministry of Transport. Railways were seen as a powerful interest lobby which had to be countered by an effective roads section within the Ministry. This factor combined with the post war release of large numbers of cheap ex-military lorries led to heightened competition for freight traffic. The new LNER suffered particularly relying in many areas on agricultural traffic which originated reasonably close to large centres of population (eg Cambridgeshire to London, Lincolnshire to Leeds etc) and was susceptible to road competition. The railways were hamstrung by the control of published freight rates which any smart road haulier could selectively undercut. This situation lasted until 1962 by which time roads had been improved significantly, lorry maximum speeds, permitted size and weight had expanded several-fold predictably continuing the transfer of freight traffic from rail onto our roads.

The attitude of the four railways to passenger traffic varied. The SR embarked on a massive third rail electrification scheme which was planned ultimately to cover all lines east of Bournemouth and Salisbury, but interrupted by World War II. Frequency was seen as the key to passenger growth and many SR steam operated lines had regular interval services (eg on the Isle of Wight). The other three companies operated prestigious main line trains but provided varying standards of local services. Both the LNER and GWR made efforts to improve local services with the opening of additional halts, steam and internal combustion railcars and auto trains in an effort to reduce costs. The huge LMS company struggled throughout its existence to evolve a satisfactory organisation, probably to some extent as a result of putting the rival LNWR and Midland companies into the same organisation. Possibly also as the LMS derived 60% of its revenue from freight, local passenger services tended to suffer as a result. The steady run down of the former North Staffordshire network around the Potteries was not untypical of the pattern elsewhere. Contrasting with the GWR and SR in station rebuilding, Leeds City station was the LMS’s only major scheme although it was intended to tackle Euston but the war intervened. Although several pre-1923 constituent companies had electrified suburban lines, other than about 10 miles in the Wirral the LMS did not invest further in this form of traction, although considering it for the Tilbury lines out of Fenchurch Street in the 1930’s before deciding to modernise steam traction with a fleet of new 3 cylinder 2-6-4 tank engines.

In 1931 the Weir Report advocated further electrification at 1,500 volts DC overhead as a standard for all new schemes. The GWR prepared a scheme for a Taunton – Penzance electrification but it was the LNER which first converted lines with the Manchester – Sheffield/Wath and Liverpool Street suburban schemes. The GWR and LMS cautiously developed diesel traction in the form of railcars and shunters.

Next time, Barry explains Nationalisation and after on Britain’s Railways.

As more railway stations become unstaffed it is the Guards and Travelling Ticket Inspectors* job to catch any fare dodgers. While a lot of stations are now equipped with ticket gates, these can only be used if there is a member of staff present, with the result that most evenings, the gates at smaller stations are unmanned and left in the open position.

Another factor to take into account is following the break up of British Railways and the separation of wheel and rail into the train operating companies running the trains and Network rail maintaining the track, has been the creation of new departments employing hundreds of staff within each fragment of the railway under the heading of Delay Attribution. The idea is that each delay should be attributed by the minute to either a TOC or Network Rail. ( London Waterloo worked out at around £15 a minute some years ago), while a five minute peak hour delay in the platform at Waterloo would appear to only cost £75, it’s the delay to all the other trains in that peak that can add up to over a 1,000 minutes that makes it serious money.

When this system was first set up over 15 years ago mad cow disease was on the front pages of news papers using its Latin initials B.S.E. This acronym was quickly stolen by the railway to stand for Blame Someone Else. At first sight it seems quite a simple concept, if it’s a fault on a train, its down to the TOC, fault on the track Network Rail, it’s the loading of other the minutes subsequent delays that the individual delay attribution staff study, dissect, and fight about.

To give you an example of how a few minutes delay can balloon out of all proportion is one evening I was booked to work a train off platform 8 at Guildford. The normal train formation was a four car unit, but on the night in question I found I had an eight car train, when I went to open up the cab at the front of the train I found that the AWS ( Automatic Warning System) magnet was directly over the track magnet, with the result that the warning horn could not be cancelled and I could not charge up the brakes to move the train. The standard practice in the past had been to isolate the AWS equipment, move the train a few feet, then reset the equipment, however following an accident where the AWS had been found to have been isolated, it was decreed that if for any reason the seal on this equipment had been broken, then the train would have to come out of service.

Although the unit was fitted with a two way radio, I could not use it because of the noise from the AWS horn blaring away, so I used the signal post telephone to explain my problem to the signalman, and ask for permission to carry out isolation of the cab equipment. By this time each portion of the fragmented railway had its own higher management structure known on the railway as Control, so the signalman phoned his control, who then phoned my control who were not even in the same building ,and a message eventually came back as no. All this time my signal had been green, and there was a cross country train to Scotland waiting to follow me on platform six.

My next suggestion was with the signalmans permission, I would go to the back cab of my eight car train, move it a few feet to get the front cab off the magnet, then return to the front cab to work the service away from Guildford. Once this was agreed it still took around five minutes to run to the back of the train open up the cab, get the guards permission to move the train, and then to return the front cab to work the train with about 15 to 20 minutes delay. At the end of duty I put a report in explaining the reason for the delay and thought no more of it.

Two days later I was taken off my turn of duty to see my manager, he said the delay minutes claimed by Rail Track for this incident were over 2,000 because the cross country service had lost its path way and had delayed other trains on its journey north. He showed me a print out of the lost minutes which even included 21 minutes delay for the empty stock working from Glasgow Central to its depot early the following morning!

The argument came down basically to had the previous driver stopped the unit in the wrong part of the platform, I did not think he had, or was the AWS magnet in the wrong place on the track for an eight car train. SWT had to take the minutes. However I did notice some time later that AWS magnet on the track was moved further down the platform.

After that rather lengthy explanation on how the fragmented railway now works, I now go back to the dilemma facing the guard on a train with a passenger who refuses to pay his fare. He has three options, 1 He could ignore the person and carry on checking the other passengers tickets, but this would underline to other passengers that they could travel without buying a ticket 2 Refuse to move until the nonpayer gets off the train, or pays his fare, his TOC would not thank him for getting a £10 pound fare, while incurring twenty minutes lost time at £5 to £15 a minute with out counting the cost of any further delays to other trains, 3 He could phone ahead to ask for the British Transport Police to meet the train at a major station and let them deal with it, of course the fare evader may get off prior to this, but the guard would have done his best without delaying trains or its passengers.

As for another passenger getting involved in evicting this foul mouth yob off the train, only time will tell if this results in a police prosecution. I hope not but stranger things have happened.

* Travelling Ticket Inspectors have been renamed as R.P.O.s Revenue Protection Officers.

From the mid fifties to the early nineties the railways had been in decline, convulsed by reorganisations and mass closures. Governments of both colours hoped that it would just crawl away into a corner and die, without causing them any more money or grief. An ageing workforce felt trapped in poorly paid jobs being too young to retire, but too old to change their career. Having said that on looking back I now accept we did not do all that much either, with overtime being the accepted method of boosting your earnings. I am proud of making the quote much used by my able local shop steward Ray Cox that in the late eighties that as far as the railway was concerned “We pretended to work, and they pretended to pay us”.

Following the fragmentation of British Railways, coupled with the high rate of retirements of men who joined the railway after the second world war, most Train Operating Companies T.O.C.s then found themselves short of drivers. Trade unions exploited this situation to force the T.O.C.s into agreeing much higher rates of pay than had been compared to the one national pay rate on B.R.

To give you an example prior to the implementation of Driver Restructuring Initiative D.R.I. on S.W.T. my rate of pay  as a driver in 1997 was £11,800 a year, in addition to this I would get time and a 1/4 on Saturdays, time &3/4 on Sundays, time & a 1/4 between 22:00 & 02:00, time & a 1/3 between 02:00 & 06:00, even time and 7/12 if I was on overtime during those hours.

A hangover from the steam days was mileage, you got an hours pay for every 15 miles over 200 in a days work. There was also what was called a one up payment that was 10% of wages for getting there on time each week. It’s a wonder that pay clerks didn’t  hang themselves from the nearest lampost because of its complexity. This was all swept away in exchange for a clean break salary of £25,000. My pay went up from £18,000 to £27,000 the following year, and for the first time since the war, the rate of pay for drivers made it a sort after position.

Alan was the second candidate I interviewed that day, I must admit I did not particularly enjoy this part of my job in that there was a format list of standard questions, such as “what are your strengths and weaknesses”, ” what qualities can you bring to this position as a driver”, by the time I had interviewed the fifth or six candidate I felt I had learnt my lines for a part in a play. With Alan it was very different, I soon realized that for a non railwayman he had a very good concept of how the railway operates. Looking back after the event I feel that he interviewed me as much as I did him, but we got on so well that the interview took nearly two hours, rather than the planned hour. I felt he would be an asset to the railway and recommended that he be accepted for training as a driver.

I have thought since that interview how much the railway has changed for the two of us who are nearly the same age, yet who entered railway service over 40 years apart. It took me eight years to get my driver position, learning, and being sworn at by other life time railwaymen. You had to learn the rule book in your own time, I even wrote a lot of it out long hand in an effort to get it to stick in my brain, There were drivers who gave up their own time to run Mutual Improvement Classes some evenings a week to explain the mysteries of the working parts of a steam engine and the rule book. To emphasize the closed society that was the Motive Power Department, even compared to departments on the railway. They would normally only take staff into the footplate grades up to the age of 23 years old, and this system of recruitment was little changed from the dawn of the railway age.

In Alans case he joined the railway as a trainee driver, and in around 15 months was out driving trains, so do I think he had it easy compared to my experience. No I Don’t  All of Alans early training took place in a class room. He never had the chance of being given permission by a signalman to pass a signal at danger other than as an exercise, and all the other events I saw on the track as a fireman. I am not suggesting for a moment that new staff should be trained in the same way that I was, that way of railway operation no longer exists. It would be like arguing that before any person is allowed to go to sea in an giant oil tanker, they should have worked at least one trip as a seaman, manning the sails on a wind jammer while rounding  Cape Horn.

Its just that I think new entrants have a far steeper hill climb in that they need to have the ability to understand the rules for a safe operation of a railway before they get any hands on experience. It’s a credit to Alan and the other “off the street” entrants, plus the quality of their training that enables them to safely carry out their duties on a daily basis.

I will now pass you over to Alan Nichols who wrote this article for his old bank In House magazine, it has some interesting insights from the point of view of a new entrant to the railway. D.P. is a banking term which stands for  Discretionary Powers for lending money.  E.P. stands for Electro Pneumatic. It was a type of braking system introduced  in 1951 on the new class third rail suburban units on the Southern Region of British Railways. This stock were given the generic name of E.P.s. Because they required a special key to operate the unit, the key became known as E.P. key, even though the same key was used on diesel locomotive built later for the railway during the modernization programme.

Part Two of this blog follows entitled “D.P. club to E.P. club by Alan Nichols“

Alan Nichols joined the Westminster Bank at Mincing Lane Branch on 13^th September, 1965, moving to Lothbury Office at the time of the merger and, after 10 years in the City and 23 in the West End, including 13 as a Saturday Manager at Camberley Branch, he took an early retirement package from his final post at Victoria Management Suite, as a Personal Relationship Manager, on 30^th September, 1998. After two years as Bursar of a girls’ prep school in Woking, he saw an advertisement which led to the opportunity to realise a boyhood dream and many, who worked with him, will know of his detailed knowledge of timetables and railway operation!

South West Trains were advertising for trainee drivers and, then aged 55, Alan applied not even expecting to be offered an interview, as the maximum age for new drivers was 45 when he retired. After a complex selection process, when over 2,500 applicants were whittled down to just 144, and almost two years later, he began the learning process, at the training school in Basingstoke. This involved Personal Track Safety, Traction (how the various types of train to be driven, work and how faults and failures of electrical and braking systems can be repaired) and the complete digestion of the 600+ page Rule Book. Having passed each element of the training course with distinction, he was ready for his first 20 hours driving mainline trains in passenger service, with an instructor from the school. Again, this was a gruelling challenge with the responsibility of both cross country services and a rush hour train from Portsmouth Harbour to Waterloo – with 12 coaches, 3,000 horsepower 500 tons behind, including around 1,000 passengers, with excellent brakes, as long as the rails are not encrusted with leaves or ice.

The next part of the process was, undeniably, the most fun and rewarding, a minimum of 225 hours driving a mixture of mainline and suburban trains out of Waterloo to such places as Reading, Basingstoke, Alton, Portsmouth Harbour and a host of outer London commuter routes. The most difficult element to achieve was a minimum of 40 dark hours, at a time of year when the sun hardly goes down. However, 9 months after embarking upon the course, the time arrived for the three day final assessment which involved 2 ½ days driving different types of train, coupling and uncoupling and a half day refresher exam on rules. Alan was presented with his EP key and driving licence on Thursday, 7^th August, thus joining the EP Club. This key is the equivalent of a car’s ignition key.

The final stage was route learning, a vital element considering that South West Trains’ territory is one of the most complex and busiest commuter networks in the country. A driver in the London Region will stop at some 16,000 stations and comply with around 54,000 signals every year and the travelling public can have every confidence in an extremely high level of professionalism in the person at the front of their train. The word “person” is used advisedly as, of Woking’s 70+ drivers, 7 are female.

Commenting on the change in lifestyle, Alan made the following observations:- “Having crashed through the 50 years glass ceiling in the bank, I was delighted to find that South West Trains, and other operators, have a more enlightened attitude towards ageism and has actively recruited new employees with a service culture background, each of whom is able to bring different skills to the railway. As for the exams and physical requirements, no allowance is made for age; we all have to achieve the same high standards. I think it is fair to say that I worked harder during the first three months’ initial training, than for ‘O’ levels, ‘A’ levels, the Institute exams and my degree.  I expected to meet a level of antipathy from some of the old stagers but, having proved myself, I am now Hon. Treasurer of the Depot’s Social Accounts and have encountered nothing other than friendship and encouragement. As for the hours, yes there are shifts but these are not too onerous, not usually earlier than 04.44 or later than 01.15 and with a maximum working week of 37 hours, which includes paid meal breaks and travel time, this beats 55 hours in an office plus commuting time, as well as seeing customers in their own homes at evenings and weekends!”

“I get home tired as a result of the concentration required during the day but at the end of the turn, once the key is off, I can go home and relax without worrying about targets etc… Our children having flown the nest, my wife, Susan, appreciates the benefits of a well paid job and the basic salary of some £38,000 enables us to enjoy what the banking industry refers to as a “Holiday of a lifetime” every other year. Job satisfaction means a lot to me as does the social contact with my colleagues for whom I organise get-togethers from time to time.. I am still Chairman of the Institute of Financial Services (formerly The Chartered Institute of Bankers), London West End Centre, and meet old colleagues who are members of the ‘Caxton Curry Club’ (ex Caxton House, Westminster) 4/5 times a year.”

For the benefit of readers,  members, the DP Club was an institution enjoyed by NatWest managers that met in the City once a month to listen to high profile speakers from the world of finance, commerce and government ministers, DP relating to their discretionary powers for lending purposes.