UTMOST COURTESY

When we commissioned the ‘J15’, Dick Hardy was invited to come and drive the first official public train, and I was to act as his pilotman. He came up to the engine early, introduced himself and asked permission to come

on the footplate to “have a look round” before he drove the train later in the day. When I offered him the regulator, he was very reluctant to take my turn, as he put it. This was a lifelong professional railwayman talking to an amateur driver! Then he offered me one of his Gauloises and was amazed when he found out I had read Steam in the Blood. We got on like a house on fire after that, and that’s the kind of man he was – a true gentleman with a phenomenal memory who treated everyone with utmost courtesy. He was a wonderful man. Dick was very busy in the railway preservation world. For example, he joined the board of the Ffestiniog that same year – so after that we did not see him very often until the ‘Steam Dream’ event in August 2002 where he dashed a bottle of beer over the ‘J15’s’ front bufferbeam, cutting his hand in the process! It was not long after that when we invited, or should I say persuaded, him to become our president and from then onwards he was a regular visitor who made a big contribution to the society. He treated everyone he met with the same degree of courtesy, and remembered every detail of the people and locomotives he had dealt with at all levels throughout his life. Phil Starks, joint vice president, M&GN Society