Former railway worker remembers glory days
Although it has been almost 30 years since he lost his job as a railway porter, following the shutdown of Jamaica’s railway system in 1992, Ewen Hilton of Catadupa, St James, carries fond memories of his time in service while he stays hard at work in his community.
Hilton, 60, took some time to reminisce with THE STAR about his 13 years of employment at Catadupa’s local railway station, starting when he was 18 years old.
“I started working here in 1979, just after I left school, and I was working right up until they closed in 1992. I used to work here in the porter’s department, using flags and signal lamps for the train, and when people were shipping things, we would weigh them,” Hilton recalled.
“My old lady [mother] used to sell to tourists when the tourist train came; she would sell cloth and make things for when they came back from Appleton Estate in the daytime and collect the US dollars. We used to have three tourist trains; one stopped here, one got to Clarendon Park, and one was the governor’s coach to Appleton,” Hilton added. “The first pay I got was $12 a day, and it was eight-hour shifts, night shifts and day shifts. When the train was running, we had 111 people working here.”
At that time, according to him, the rail service provided numerous opportunities for locals, young and old alike, to make money in the district.
“When the train was running, people borrowed money and said it was guaranteed you would get it back later, and it was US dollars, too. The kids would pick up their plums and sell them in the morning time on the first train, then go to school, and then come back for the next train and sell plums to be able to go back to school the next day,” said Hilton.
“Every day you would buy bread from seven different ‘bread-men,’ and hundreds of box drinks a day. That time, it was $60 dollars for one crate of Red Stripe beer, and we used to buy 100 cases from town [Kingston] every other Monday,” Hilton added. “When the railway closed down, the place was wrecked, and a lot of kids couldn’t go back to school.”
Nowadays, despite the lack of economic prospects in the now-subdued Catadupa, Hilton makes his living as a farmer and shopkeeper, while also taking care of the former market building across the road from the railway station.
“Over there, across the road, that building was the market where we had five butchers, plus we would sell ground provisions there. Now, we use it for other things; we have classes in there because we got a WiFi connection set up in there, and the kids have class in there sometimes. They also did COVID-19 vaccinations in there recently,” said Hilton.
“For myself, I am still healthy, and I walk eight miles everyday. I still do it while going to the bush to look about my goats, and I do climbing same way.”