FOOTPLATE IMPOSTER - PART 2
More of John Wells’ illicit footplate trips
SUDDENLY, AGAINST ALL ODDS AND EXPECTATIONS (AND CERTAINLY AGAINST THE RULES), HE IS DRIVING A STEAM LOCOMOTIVE UP THE EAST COAST MAIN LINE
Come with me, if you will, on a journey back in time to the Britain of May 1959. Harold Macmillan is Prime Minister, Buddy Holly – who had died in a plane crash in Iowa three months earlier – is topping the UK hit parade, all television broadcasts are in black and white, while at Cowes, on the Isle of Wight the first hovercraft, developed by inventor Christopher Cockerell from coffee tins and a vacuum cleaner, undergoes its very first sea trials. On the railways the spectre of dieselisation is on the horizon, but steam is still the predominant form of motive power, and on the East Coast Main Line, King’s Cross ‘ Top Shed’, under shedmaster Peter Townend, still has an allocation of more than 100 engines, including no fewer than 19 ‘A4s’. Almost every named express is hauled by a Gresley, Peppercorn or Thompson ‘Pacific’; timber-bodied coaching stock from the 1930s is still in everyday use. Forty-four miles down the line from the bufferstops at King’s Cross, in the goods yard at Sandy, Bedfordshire, John Wells, a young railway photographer in his twenties, is fraternising with the enginemen from Hitchin shed who work the daily pick-up goods. From Monday to Friday, Wells works for the London-based Sun insurance company. While it might not be the most boring job in all the world, it isn’t exactly afire with swashbuckling adventure either. So when the enginemen on the Sandy shunt invite him up onto the footplate of ‘L1’ 2-6-4T No. 67741 he jumps at the chance.
DREAM COME TRUE
Wells is invited to take the regulator and, under supervision, is shown the rudiments of driving a steam locomotive. It’s a day he’ll never forget – and a dream come true. Shunting completed, the driver turns to him and says: “Do you fancy coming back to Hitchin with us?”
John cheerfully agrees. Well, who wouldn’t? What he doesn’t realise though, is that when his driver friend says: ‘Do you fancy coming back to Hitchin with us?’, it will be him doing the driving. In a blur, he is installed into the driving seat of No. 67741, shown how to wind the reverser back and apply the vacuum brake – and suddenly, against all odds and expectations (and certainly against the rules), he is driving a steam locomotive up the ECML. So began the remarkable, illicit, 9,500-mile, five-and-a-half-year footplate ‘career’ of John Wells, and his madcap association with Hitchin locomotive driver David Impey – not an imagined fantasy as a handful of readers suggested after reading part one of this story (SR472) – but a surreptitious real-life adventure that became more audacious and more risky as the months rolled by, backed up by the photographs that John Wells himself took at the time, and by the almost forensically detailed log that he kept of every footplate trip he took between March 1959 and November 1964. Within a very short time Wells had acquired his own set of enginemen’s ‘blues’ – bib-and-brace overalls, jacket and greasetop cap, complete with Eastern Region blue totem cap badge – and with David Impey as his mentor and sponsor, he was getting as many as six unauthorised footplate trips a month, sometimes taking the regulator, sometimes swinging the shovel, and sometimes just riding as a third man on the footplate. To anyone who saw him ‘on duty’, under his greasetop cap John Wells was for all the world just another young BR fireman learning his craft. Why would anyone be suspicious?
PeRFeCT Ruse
He filled tenders and bunkers at water cranes, helped to push engines round on turntables, wound the tender water scoop down at water troughs, pulled the coal forward in tenders, set the headlamps, ‘went underneath’ to couple and uncouple engines from stock – everything in fact that a genuine footplateman would do – except submit time cards and draw a BR pay packet at the end of the week. He was the perfect imposter engineman. After two years as David Impey’s very privileged but very illegal ‘pupil’, John Wells, at the age of 25, could truthfully claim to have driven ‘A1’, ‘A3’ and ‘A4’ class ‘Pacifics’, ‘V2s’, ‘B1s’, a WD 2-8-0 and a ‘9F’ 2-10-0 on the East Coast Main Line, and fired on many other locomotive types besides, without ever being employed by BR. The fact is, however, that Wells never made any claims to driving or firing anything. He kept the story of his clandestine footplate activities to himself, and it was only after his death that the details of his remarkable railway ‘career’ were discovered among his personal effects, in the form of the most amazingly comprehensive tabulated logs. He had painstakingly recorded the date, the identity of the locomotive, the train number and/or its description, the names of the rostered driver and fireman (where known), the start and finish points of each journey, notes to distinguish whether he was driving, firing or riding, the distances he covered in each of the ‘disciplines’ down to the nearest quarter-mile – and a running total of all the mileage he accrued during his amazing five-and-a-half-year escapade. But even then his telltale footplate logs would almost certainly have been consigned to the skip, were it not for the actions of his long-term friend and fellow railway enthusiast Chris Berridge, who was asked to act as executor of John’s railway possessions, including his camera gear and thousands of photographs, a collection of railway relics, a large model railway layout… and those all-revealing logs.
John Wells Was ‘the man on the shovel’ on virtually every trip he had on the ‘oxbridge’ line, his log recording over 150 instances
Chris Berridge explains: “John had mentioned a number of footplate trips in his correspondence with me in the early 1960s – but his incredibly detailed logs showed they had been on a scale which I simply hadn’t grasped. “He had listed meticulously every mile and fraction of a mile that he had travelled on every locomotive, clearly specifying those trips on which he had driven and fired, and citing in all but a handful of instances the names of the rostered engine crew. “He never broached the subject of ‘official permission’ for the trips he had, but in hindsight it’s clear that he didn’t have any. In the company of Driver David Impey, he masqueraded as an Eastern Region fireman from Hitchin, and carried it off convincingly enough to be accepted onto the footplates of numerous locomotives, including those heading express trains over long distances, without being challenged.” How it was that nobody ever blew the whistle on Impey and his young protégé, and how their cosy and highly irregular indulgences went on for so long without ever being reported or exposed by the footplate inspectors they must have encountered, is quite a puzzle. No less seriously, if either of the footplate unions, ASLEF or the NUR, had known that one of their members was coaching a total outsider in the art of driving and firing steam engines on the main line, the fallout would have been colossal.
MAVeRICK
David Impey was known to his footplate colleagues at Hitchin as something of a maverick and a taker of risks, but he was no fool. He knew when and where the railway’s ‘higher authority’ would be watching, and where it would be safe for his young protégé to join him and his official fireman on the footplate. Clearly, Impey himself was never going to admit his rule-breaking to his bosses, and many of his official firemen were presumably only too happy to let the unofficial but very willing John Wells bend his back, shovel tons of coal, and go home with a sooty face and a wet shirt while they got paid for his sweat and toil. In instances where a fireman was either uncomfortable or unwilling to cede his duties to the eager but untrained John Wells, he would have no option but to travel as a footplate passenger. Once he’d got into the swing of footplate life though, and gained confidence, there was nothing timid or apologetic about John Wells. Once – in January 1960, under Impey’s supervision – he drove ‘K3’ class ‘Mogul’ No. 61830 from Hitchin to King’s Cross on the 7.55am Peterborough (Spital)-Wood Green Class H goods, and then brazenly deposited the engine in the heart of ‘Top Shed’, with all the authority of a time-served engineman. During ECML engineering diversions in November that same year, he drove ‘A4’ No. 60005 Sir Charles Newton out of King’s Cross on the 10.20pm Edinburgh express, up Holloway Bank and on to Hitchin via the Hertford loop – a distance of 33 miles. Impey, who was on the footplate acting as pilotman, had somehow persuaded the Gateshead driver to stand down, and allow his young ‘apprentice’ to take the regulator. The footplate jollies enjoyed by Wells and Impey weren’t confined to their home turf, or even to BR Eastern Region, for as already evidenced in part one of this story, on days off and at weekends the pair would go busking for footplate opportunities together in other parts of the country. Wearing the regulation footplate uniform and relying on the friendly, brotherly bond that existed among enginemen throughout the network, in February 1960 they turned up at St Pancras, and successfully persuaded the Kentish Town crew of rebuilt ‘Patriot’ No. 45522 Prestatyn to make space for them on the footplate for the 196-mile run to Leeds with the ‘Thames-Clyde Express’.
sANDY CONNeCTION
1961 turned out to be a very good year for imposter engineman John Wells, for he clocked up no fewer than 59 footplate trips, starting in January with driving turns on both ‘B1’ No. 61286 and ‘Black Five’ No. 45331 working parcels trains between Bletchley and Cambridge. His hosts that day were Bletchley Driver Sid Bewley and a passed fireman, whose acquaintances he had made some time before at Sandy, where the parcels trains on the ex-LNWR ‘Varsity Line’ also stopped to pick up. A month later, he and David Impey were at Paddington, beseeching an Old Oak Common driver to let them ride the boards of ‘King’ No. 6002 King William IV, on the London-Birmingham (Snow Hill) section of the ‘Cambrian Coast Express’, Wells footplating the ‘King’ as far as Banbury, where he and Impey, who had been ‘on the cushions’, swapped over. For the journey home, Impey fixed it for Wells to ride the 110¼ miles back to Paddington on the footplate of another ‘King’, the now-preserved No. 6024 King Edward I, by courtesy of another Old Oak man. Just weeks later the young insurance company executive was experiencing Bulleid power from the footplate for the first time, riding with a Bournemouth driver and fireman on ‘Merchant Navy’
No. 35024 East Asiatic Company, at the head of the ‘Bournemouth Belle’ from Waterloo. Impey, never a man to do things by halves, negotiated a ride for both of them on BR Standard Class 5 No. 73080 Merlin from Bournemouth to Southampton Central, and places on the footplate of now-preserved ‘Merchant Navy’ No. 35028 Clan Line, working the 7.16pm Southampton Central-Waterloo. The ECML was John Wells’ principal playground for two years – but changes were in the air that would force the dissolution of his partnership with the mercurial David Impey, and oblige him to look elsewhere to continue his closet footplate activities. Hitchin shed (34D) had lost its allocation of around 30 steam locomotives as early as November 1960, although the depot had continued to execute its rostered duties with engines loaned out from New England (34E). Formal closure came in June 1961, although the shed provided facilities for steam locomotives right up to and beyond June 1963, when King’s Cross ‘Top Shed’ closed and steam was officially banned south of Hitchin. In April 1961, Impey handed John Wells the regulator of Grantham ‘A3’ No. 60055 Woolwinder for a 1.45pm Saturdays-only King’s Cross-Peterborough passenger service – and Wells drove it for 31 of the 41 miles between London and Biggleswade. It would be the last time he would get to drive a ‘Pacific’ on the ECML – and it was his penultimate trip with Impey as his ‘sponsor’. Although the shadows were lengthening for steam at the London end of BR Eastern Region’s Great Northern main line, on the Oxford-Bletchley-Bedford-Cambridge cross-country ‘Varsity Line’ which was under BR London Midland Region control, it was still high noon – and it’s clear from the detailed logs he kept that John Wells wasted no time in massaging the friendly relationships he had earlier struck up at Sandy with the Bletchley (1E) enginemen who worked the mail and parcels trains on this east-west route. During the first two years of his illicit footplating, between March 1959 and March 1961, Wells had cadged just a sparse handful of footplate outings with the Bletchley crews. For example, when he drove Cambridge-based ‘B1’ No. 61286 in January 1961, the ‘remarks’ column of his log shows that he drove the engine the 29 miles between Bedford St Johns and Cambridge. On the return trip, Bletchley ‘Black Five’ No. 45331 was the rostered engine for the 6.35pm Cambridge-Bletchley parcels, and Wells drove the full 46 miles. But from this point on, for reasons that can only be guessed at, he took the regulator on ‘Varsity Line’ workings only very rarely. Did a higher authority intervene and put a stop to his clandestine driving? Did the Bletchley crews themselves consider it too risky for him to continue? That’s one thing that Wells’ amazing log doesn’t tell us. However, from the early summer of 1961 onwards, John Wells was ‘the man on the shovel’ on virtually every trip he had on the ‘Oxbridge’ line, his log recording over 150 instances where he actively took the role of fireman, evidenced by comments such as ‘Fired all the way’, ‘Fired and serviced locomotive on shed’, ‘Fired from Bedford’, or just plain ‘Fired’. As the months rolled by, Wells didn’t just get to know the Bletchley crews, he also got to know the Bletchley engines, their
WELLS STEPPED IN, BROUGHT THE FIRE ROUND AND HANDED THE SHOVEL BACK TO HIS YOUNG COLLEAGUE
ways and their foibles. ‘Black Fives’ Nos. 45089, 45222, 45292 and the now-preserved No. 45379 became familiar friends, as did many of 1E’s BR Standard Class 4 4-6-0s, in particular Nos. 75028, 75054 and 75055.
ILLICIT EXPERIENCE
By 1962, although still a ‘recreational engineman’ who worked chiefly on Saturdays and Sundays, he had clearly integrated well into the fabric of Bletchley footplate life. It’s difficult to come to any other conclusion other than that, by this time, he had developed into a competent and very useful fireman, and that he was popular with the Bletchley men – particularly senior drivers with whom he collectively fired on more than 70 occasions. After the whizz-bang-wallop of his escapades on the ECML with David Impey and other drivers, the ‘Varsity Line’ workings were comparatively routine and unspectacular. Virtually all timetabled passenger workings on the line had gone over to DMU operation as early as 1959, and so it was trains such as the 4.25am Bletchley-Cambridge mails, the 8.25am Bletchley-Cambridge parcels and their balancing workings that kept John Wells’ footplate ambitions buoyant. From time to time an occasional flurry of excitement would break the routine – such as a particular day in February 1962, when in what appears to be another David Impey ‘fix-it’, John found himself as a third man on ‘Britannia’ No. 70039 Sir Christopher Wren, on the King’s Cross-Cleethorpes express. By Huntingdon, however, the ‘Brit’ was in trouble, and the young Boston fireman was struggling to breathe life into a black and receding fire. Wells stepped in, brought the fire round and handed the shovel back to his young colleague at Peterborough, with No. 70039’s safety valves screaming. Wells’ log records another diversion from his ‘Varsity Line’ routine, in September that year when ‘Jubilee’ class-leader No. 45552 Silver Jubilee took him and excursionists from Bletchley to Blackpool to see the illuminations. A second ‘Jubilee’ – No. 45723 Fearless – was provided for the homeward run, though the less-than-enthralling comment – ‘took water with scoop’ perhaps suggests that a traction inspector was policing the footplate that day. John Wells had the best of both worlds – a well-paid job in the city during the week, and a privilege ticket that gave him full access to steam footplates almost wherever he chose at weekends… but nothing is forever. With Sulzer and Brush Type 2 diesels beginning to make inroads into Bletchley’s ‘Varsity Line’ steam diagrams, and the closure of Bletchley shed just 12 months away, Wells had his last steam firing turn on Stanier ‘8F’ No. 48688 in June 1964, on the 9.40am Swanbourne-Cambridge Class H goods, which returned westwards to Sandy, and then ran light engine back to Bletchley. The fireman stood aside to allow Wells what would be his final swings of the shovel. John Wells married in 1965 and moved to Bedford, but remained in touch with his old mentor and fellow collaborator David Impey. In 1975, at the age of 50, Wells was unexpectedly made redundant and never returned to paid employment. A year later he moved to Failand, on the southwestern outskirts of Bristol, and died there from liver cancer in 2012. He was 77. David Impey remained a BR driver after the end of steam, but his luck ran out in the late 1980s when he was involved in a shunting accident at Hornsey depot. Following a disciplinary hearing, Impey was removed from the footplate and finished his railway career as a stationman at Royston, Hertfordshire. He died in the late 1990s/early 2000s.