Free train tickets took us on holiday

DAN Shaw’s article on Snow Hill station brought back memories for me. Several times from 1946 until 1952 I stood on platform 7 with my parents and sister waiting for the train to arrive from Wolverhampton.

Sometimes we had a week’s holiday in Penzance but other years we’d go only as far as Torquay.

I was always in a nervous state, wondering if we would manage to get a seat.

My family would stand a few yards from each other, hoping that when the train stopped one of us might be right opposite a carriage door.

My father was a GWR employee, which qualified us to get our rail tickets for free.

I remember saying to my father how lucky the people were who got on an empty train starting from Wolverhampton.

We lived near the station at Oldbury and Langley Green and because of this and having free tickets I had a good idea. I asked my father if we could go to Snow Hill, change trains and go to Wolverhampton, thus boarding an empty train. “No,” was the reply.

I don’t know if the train ran during the war years. Probably not, but I remember one summer, probably 1942, my father put us on the train going to Aberystwyth, where the three of us had a week’s holiday in a caravan.

My father had to stay at work, driving a lorry during the day and some nights on fire-watching duty.

I wonder now if some unlucky families had to stand all the while so I cannot recall anybody sitting in their cases or just standing in the corridor. Once I had my seat I immediately concentrated on collecting engine numbers, armed with my Ian Allen reference book.

I have no memories at all regarding the return journeys. I imagine the crowds of passengers waiting to board the train at Penzance seemed even denser, with the station being smaller than Snow Hill.

Michael A. Cox Old Harlow Essex IN Bugle 1547, on page 8 was a picture of Powke Lane School - I always knew it as the Board School.

I went to Beeches Road School where Mr Richards taught before he moved. He once sent me out of his class for having dirty ears!

Are Mavis Wyle and myself related? I lived at 16 Spring Avenue.

Alan Wyle Guildford