WHY THE RAILWAYS ARE
The Derby Telegraph is backing a city-wide campaign to persuade the Government to site the headquarters of Great British Railways in the city. As we count down to Monday’s last day of a public vote on the issue, Zena Hawley talks to Derby City Council’s l
DERBY is the only city to have manufactured railway rolling stock continuously since 1840, and it is still home to the UK’s most extensive train manufacturing capability, where trains are designed and built in the same place, in Litchurch Lane.
Over the intervening 122 years, generations of Derby people have worked “on the railway” – whole families have followed each other into the industry making it a truly railway place at heart.
Among the families is that of the leader of Derby City Council, Chris Poulter, whose own family can trace its links with the rail industry in Derby back to the 1880s, when his great grandfather John James Poulter came to Derby, from Weymouth in Dorset, during the rail boom to work as a gas fitter and lived very close to the station in Nelson Street – alongside dozens of other people employed in the rail industry at that time. By the time of the 1911 census, he had moved to Young Street and was listed as a railway coach gas fitter.
Mr Poulter’s grandfather was John Sidney Poulter, who was born in 1899 and on the 1939 register was listed as a railway and motor coach body builder and living in Stanton Street, not far from Young Street where he grew up.
And Mr Poulter’s father, Keith, born in 1927, worked as a fitter on Derby Loco Works, where he became shop foreman and also attended union meetings held at the Rail Institute in Railway Terrace, while a young Mr Poulter recalls playing snooker while he waiting for his father.
On the other side of his family, his great-grandfather, Arthur William Mallett, was a railway clerk and councillor, and his father Charles, who came from Gloucestershire, was also a railway worker.
Mr Poulter said: “A lot of people moved from the poorer rural areas in those days to places like Derby to
work because the rail industry was booming.”
Currently, Mr Poulter is leading a citywide campaign to persuade the Government that the headquarters of one of the most recent and newest rail bodies should be located in Derby.
The city is up against five other well-known railway towns and cities – York, Doncaster, Newcastle uponTyne, Crewe and Birmingham – in the race to be chosen as the relocation of Great British Railways (GBR), which will be a successor to Network Rail, organising the national running of trains from lines to tickets.
Part of the process was a visit by
Rail Minister Wendy Morton this week, and also an online public vote, which Mr Poulter is urging people to take part in and which ends at midnight on Monday.
The online vote is just one way the Government will measure which place should be the new headquarters – it will also be looking at how
GBR in Derby would help the levelling up agenda, how accessible the city is, railway heritage and links to the network, and how much Derby would represent value for money.
Derby meets all the criteria with its proud rail history, centrally placed location, being at the heart of the rail industry, and scores of businesses in the supply chain located in the area, and it will give the Government a chance to level up in the East Midlands by bringing civil service jobs to the city and creating new jobs.
He said: “There will be hundreds and thousands of families in Derby who have similar family connections with the railway to mine.
“So if all of those would vote for Derby to become the home of GBR then it would really boost our chances of winning.”
Although none of Keith Poulter’s children, including Chris, went into the rail industry, Chris Poulter has fond memories of the part the industry played in his life growing up.
He said: “I remember the great
Christmas parties that were held for the children of rail workers in a big shed off Railway Terrace, opposite where the Brunswick Tavern is.
“And, of course, rail workers had concessions to travel on the railway for free, and I remember going to see the Lord Mayor’s Show in London on a trip to the capital once and also to Weymouth, from where we would go to the
Isle of Wight. And Scotland, Skegness and even Guernsey.”
Although Mr
Poulter recalls his grandfather, whom he calls “a real gent” who wore collar studs on a Sunday, it’s the memories of his father working on the railway he remembers most of all.
He said: “I associate the smell of engine oil with him and his work clothes. I also recall him and his brothers, Doug and Roy, having
plenty of banter between them all because between them they either worked at the loco works or at the carriage and wagon works, which created quite a bit of rivalry.
“I am proud, like many other people, that I can say that successive generations of my family worked on the railway in Derby. As I have been working on the campaign to bring GBR to Derby, it has evoked memories for me and I have met many people for whom it has done the same.
“The railway in Derby has been more than just jobs to many people over the years, it has been a way of life and it’s to be hoped that if GBR comes here, it will set up even more people with a way into the industry.”
Railway building began at Derby in 1840, when the North Midland
Railway, the Midland Counties Railway and the Birmingham and Derby Railway set up engine sheds as part of their Tri Junction Station.
When the three merged in 1844 to form the Midland Railway, its first locomotive and carriage superintendent, Matthew Kirtley, persuaded the directors to build their own rolling stock, rather than buying it in.
By the 1860s, the works had expanded and in 1873 split to form the Loco Works and the Carriage and Wagon Works, the latter was in Litchurch Lane and was built in 1876.
Trains were built to serve cities and lines across the UK and also across the world, including the USA.
In 1914, the works turned to producing supplies for the army in the First World War – building ambulance trains and army wagons, plus parts for rifles.
To add your voice to Derby’s Great British Railways campaign, which will bring additional jobs and prestige to the city, vote by going to the website derbygbr.co.uk.
I am proud, like many other people, that I can say that successive generations of my family worked on the railway.
Chris Poulter