Trains were first love of town station master
Tributes to kind and friendly railwayman who died at 95
acole@thekmgroup.co.uk A man who got to indulge his love of trains throughout his career has died at the age of 95.
Leslie Jefferies was station master at six different locations around the country, the longest at Maidstone East station from 1964 to 1978.
A train buff throughout his life, he had started on the railways as a clerk in the goods office in Fratton, Portsmouth, as he had grown up in Gosport, in 1936.
During the Second World War he was a radio operator in the Tank Regiment, and was based in North Africa and north west Europe.
He met his wife, Jean, who died before him, while in the Lake District during the war. She was serving in a fish and chip shop, and they married in 1946.
His other stations had been on the Isle of Wight, in Surrey, Emsworth, Sidcup and Gipsy Hill in London.
His son, Mick, said: “He really enjoyed his work. Trains were his first love.”
A Portsmouth Football Club fan throughout his life, he lived in London Road, Allington, and was a keen gardener and tended his immaculate garden there.
He spent his last days in the Heart of Kent Hospice in Aylesford, where he died of heart failure on Tuesday, June 9.
Mr Jefferies added: “He was very friendly and liked a joke. They said at the hospice he was a lovely old man.”
He leaves children Mick, 67, and Janet, 56, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. His funeral was held on Wednesday.