SEVERN VALLEY’S ’68
The men who cleaned, fired and drove end-of-steam locomotives got together at the Severn Valley Railway’s 1968-themed gala, and it was a gold mine of memories, writes
How the SVR commemorated the 50th anniversary of the end of steam
By his own admission, Tommy Jones’ railway career “started by accident”. Yet it cemented his place in history as the man who dropped the fire of ‘Black Five’ No. 45110 on ‘Fifteen Guinea Special’ evening – and then, aged just 18, became the last man to drive it in BR service.
Tommy (full name Thomas Eric Jones) started his career in 1965 by taking an apprenticeship as an electrician – only to be laid off after just two months. So he went to Lostock Hall shed and asked if they had any jobs going for electricians. Unsurprisingly for a depot still dealing with heavy, outdated steam machinery, there were no such positions, but there were vacancies for cleaners – which, it was explained, would set him on the ladder to fireman, passed fireman and driver. He decided to take it. “I’d always been interested in railways,” he recalls, “as my grandfather was a driver at Crewe North.” Come the fateful last day of steam, Lostock Hall had already been closed for a week, having provided many of the engines for the enthusiast specials of August 4. After that, its staff were based at Preston station working diesels – but on August 11, Tommy
and his driver, Jim Slater, were detailed to return to their old workplace, using a 350hp diesel shunter as transport, and dispose No. 45110 for what was supposed to be the last time. First, they helped to get ‘Britannia’ No. 70013 Oliver Cromwell ready for its marathon journey to Norwich and preservation at Bressingham, coaling and watering it and cleaning its fire. During the latter process, says Tommy, “part of the brick arch fell down and jammed the rocking grate – we had to use the pricker to get it out. “I only remembered that at our 50th anniversary reunion in Preston on August 3 – Frank Watson [the traction inspector on board the ‘Brit’] reminded me!”
Next, Tommy “threw the whole fire out” of No. 45110 – and then, while his driver was in the messroom, drove it off the ashpit. “Some drivers would let you do that as a reward! “I put it down No. 5 road, screwed the handbrake on, put it in mid-gear – and that was it.”
That short movement – two or three hundred yards at most – makes Tommy not only the last fireman to work on No. 45110, but also its last driver.
It must have been a very sad moment… “Well…” he replies. “I was young and stupid in those days, and I wasn’t quite as keen on it as some of the lads, like John Fletcher – so I didn’t really think much about it at the time.”
But at the Severn Valley Railway’s ‘Last Days of Steam’ event on August 4, he clapped eyes on the Stanier 4-6-0 for the first time in 50 years, and climbed back onto its footplate once again – and that, he admits, was “very emotional”.
SHED MATES
It was a day for reunions and reminiscences, as enginemen gathered not only from Lostock Hall but also Rose Grove – the latter stepping back into the cab of one of their old engines, ‘8F’ No. 48773.
As our sister title Steam World pointed out this month, next to Lostock Hall and Carnforth, Rose Grove is the oft-overlooked underdog in the last trio of 1968 steam sheds. But all sheds have their stories to tell – and Mick Kelly’s tale is another that highlights the odd workings of history and fate.
Even though he could see that steam was coming to an end, he joined the railway in 1964 to follow in the footsteps of his father Tom, who had started at Rose Grove in 1936 only to be made redundant at the end of the same year. After a series of other jobs, Tom found himself back at the shed, but was called up on the outbreak of war. “He went to the recruiting office and said ‘this must be a mistake – I’m in a reserved occupation as a railway fireman,” Mick recounts. “Then the recruiting officer said: ‘OK, we’ll put you in the Navy as a stoker!”
He actually ended up in the Royal Engineers, and survived the sinking of the Lancastria off St Nazaire on June 17 1940. One third of all the servicemen from the British Expeditionary Force who died in France that year were killed on the Cunard liner when the Luftwaffe bombed it while it was evacuating the troops. But the tragedy remained largely forgotten for many years, for the news was suppressed at the time to avoid a blow to national morale after a much more successful evacuation from Dunkirk. As the German bombers strafed the ship, Tom Kelly escaped by stripping naked and squeezing through the porthole – but the other man in his cabin died.
The Royal Engineers later posted Tom to Persia with the 190th Railway Operating Company, where he worked on No. 48773 during its military service as War Department No. 307 – and years later, he would be reunited with it at Rose Grove. That’s not the only strange parallel between the Stanier 2‑8‑0’s wartime exploits and 1968. August 4 seems to be a significant date for this engine – not only was it involved in the enthusiast railtours on that day in ’68, but its famous derailment by a camel in the Persian desert also took place on August 4. Ironically, Mick never worked on it from Rose Grove shed, but regularly did so while it was at its previous shed of Bolton, working a Brindle Heath‑Carlisle turn.
This was because in February 1967, he and David Greenhalgh had transferred to Blackburn. The move was “to our shame”, he admits, but “we were the junior men and if we’d stayed, we’d have been out of a job.”
“Actually, it was because they didn’t cut the mustard at Rose Grove,” jokes Frank Chippendale, who was also revelling in the nostalgia at Kidderminster, and whose last driver at Rose Grove was none other than Tom Kelly.
FOOTPLATE DIEHARDS
Perhaps if they had been made redundant that would have signalled the end of Mick’s railway career altogether – but that was far from the case, for today both he and Frank keep their hand in on the footplate as West Coast Railways driver and fireman respectively.
For David, too, the move was fortuitous – leading him to a place in the history books very like that of Tommy. On August 11 1968, David was the fireman on the train engine of the ‘Fifteen Guinea Special’ – ‘Black Five’ No. 44781.
This was the ‘one that got away’, being scrapped following its appearance in The Virgin Soldiers, after an unhelpful BR scuppered a preservation attempt. A real shame, for David remembers it as “a good ’un”. “But I do have a Hornby model of it!” he adds. Sitting on a bench next to
No. 48773, Dennis Bentley could be seen holding a new firing shovel that Mick had bought from the Friends of 4930 Hagley Hall sales stand. This was only the second time Dennis had had a shovel in his hands since 1968 – the first having been during a footplate ride on Oliver Cromwell for his 65th birthday.
Having joined the railway in 1962, Dennis had been the senior man in the same four-strong cleaning gang as Mick, along with John Nixon and Derek Moody. The latter was tragically killed in 1968, three weeks before his 21st birthday, when yobs dropped a coping stone from a bridge onto his engine.
Dennis spent his last week on steam in 1968 working ‘8Fs’ on a Whitebirk power station turn, yet remembers: “Right up to the last day, I didn’t think steam would end.
“I didn’t think they could just cut them off like that – a job would come up on the Monday and they’d have to send them out again. “But it was only us young lads who didn’t believe it – the drivers were resigned to it, and it was so sad to see them going around with long faces.”
That difference – and the pride some of these men had in the job – is underlined by another story related to Steam Railway at the GCR gala the following day.
Bringing one ‘8F’ back onto Rose Grove shed after its last turn, its driver told his fireman not to bother ‘putting it to bed’ with the fire cleaned out and the boiler topped up – saying: “Just let the plugs drop, it’s going for scrap anyway.” But the fireman responded: “No, I’m going to do this properly” – and did so.
As the end drew nigh, the footplatemen shared their engines with those who had come to pay their last respects. Dennis
DENNIS BENTLEY
THE DRIVERS WERE RESIGNED TO IT, AND IT WAS SO SAD TO SEE THEM GOING AROUND WITH LONG FACES
continues: “We had more spectators than enginemen – people were coming from all over the country and putting up tents! We’d give them a ride on shed and they’d be as pleased as punch.”
The crews weren’t the only ones turning a blind eye to the rules being broken. Dennis remembers police turning up at the shed but taking no action against the trespassing enthusiasts – something also experienced by the famous Master Neverers Association during their illicit cleaning activities at the shed.
CLEAN-UP ACT
Many of the ‘Master Neverers’ themselves were reunited at the SVR event – by no means the first time they’ve been back together since 1968, but this time with a twist. Just as they had done 50 years before, they got stuck in with the rags, oil and paraffin to get the grimy ‘Five’ looking shiny for the cameras. You can hire all the visiting engines you want, but it wouldn’t hold a candle to an emotional reunion and re-creation like this.
Ah yes, the visiting engine. The SVR should have been reuniting no fewer than four genuine 1968 locomotives for this event, with resident Ivatt ‘4MT’ No. 43106 joined by Jeremy Hosking’s ‘Black Five’ No. 45231 – but the latter was unable to attend, having failed at Southall with the common ‘Black Five’ ailment of injector problems (see News).
Instead, former Preston station pilot No. 43106 took the star turn on an evening ‘Fifteen Guinea Special’, rewriting history somewhat by placing the iconic ‘1T57’ reporting number on the smokebox of a ‘Flying Pig’!
But it really didn’t overly matter that there was no working ‘Black Five’, or that the real star locomotives (Nos. 45110 and 48773) were both out-of-ticket, static exhibits. This was not about the engines – it was about the people.
“This is much more personal than just a train going up and down,” commented organiser David Postle of the Kidderminster Railway Museum.
The ‘Master Neverers’ are justly famous, but it’s easy to overlook the fact that many other enthusiasts were cleaning engines in the last years of steam – and this, too, was remembered in another cameo scene.
In 1968, a 20-year-old Steve Leyland was a member of an unofficial cleaning gang at Bolton shed (9K, formerly 26C), and when the depot closed on June 29 that year he made a headboard for the last engine to leave the shed – using an old bedhead. Along with its ‘Target 89’ reporting number, the ‘Black Five’ – No. 45269 – was adorned with the headboard and a Union flag for its trip working. Sadly, a guard’s strike meant that its train was cancelled (some things don’t change, even after 50 years…), but its driver, Tommy Sammon, obtained permission from Control to return to Bolton via a circuitous route to give Steve’s headboard a little more exposure.
Fifty years later, the fragile headboard is riddled with woodworm and gradually falling apart, but was gingerly lifted onto the smokebox of No. 45110 – itself a Bolton engine before it ended up at Lostock Hall – for another moment in the limelight. This may well have been the last time it is reunited with a ‘Black Five’. Certainly, by the time of the next big 1968 anniversary in 2028, it could have crumbled to dust.
Time has taken its toll on the ranks of 1968 enginemen too. Said John Fletcher: “We had 120 people at our Preston reunion on August 3 – but most of them were enthusiasts.
“There’s only about 15 to 20 of us Lostock Hall men left, and we’ve amalgamated our group with Carnforth and Rose Grove. “We’d like to say a big thank you to the SVR for today – they’ve really spoilt us!”
As we get further and further away from the steam era, it’s all the more important to keep the memory alive.
And while such wonderful events as this can still be held, what a way to remember.