KEN MIDDLEMIST INTERVIEW
Memoirs of an ex-BR (NE) fireman and current Aln Valley driver
Rather than just ‘coming full circle’, as the oft-quoted phrase goes, one could almost say that Ken Middlemist’s life has been going round in circles. He’s spent it happily making a living from two things he loves – fishing, and working on the footplate – but he’s gone back to each one twice.
The second time he returned to work on steam locomotives was to volunteer at the Aln Valley Railway which, since its formation in 1995, has been working to revive the Alnmouth-Alnwick branch in Northumberland.
This makes him something now increasingly rare in preservation – a footplateman still working over the same route that he did in BR days. Back in 1966, when the Alnwick line was the last steam-worked branch in the North East, he was on the shovel during its final day of steam – and now, more than five decades later, he’s at the regulator of the AVR’s locomotives as they steadily head further eastwards along the extending track to reclaim this lost territory.
As the AVR reaches its 25th anniversary, and with Ken having not long passed the equally significant birthday of 75 (which he celebrated on a railtour with Tornado in December), we hear the story of his life with steam.
SHORT BACK AND RIDES
Ken was, as he puts it, “born into a railway environment” – at No. 16 Station Cottages, right next to Alnmouth station and steam shed, on February 20 1944. His father, George, was a driver at the depot, a sub-shed of Tweedmouth (52D); and so Ken, and his elder brother Robert, were regular visitors – for haircuts. Another of the drivers, Richie Carson, did this as a sideline – and when he retired, passed fireman Tommy MacKenley took up the scissors.
From a very early age – just six or seven – Ken was introduced to the footplate of the elderly North Eastern Railway ‘D20’ 4-4-0s that were eking out their final years on the Alnwick branch in the 1950s before withdrawal. His mother Margaret, who worked at a saddler’s in Alnwick, would take him to the Northumberland county town on the branch train, and if his father was driving, “I’d be sat in the fireman’s seat and told ‘don’t move!’”
Yet, despite these experiences, when he left Alnwick Modern School in 1959, he didn’t immediately decide on a footplate career.
“I wasn’t sure what to do,” he remembers, “but some of my mates were working for Hardy’s” – a fishing tackle manufacturer in Alnwick, which employed 200 people at that time, and whose wares provided the branch line with some of its parcels and freight traffic.
“I had a quick interview and got a job packing parcels, earning £1, 18 shillings and a penny a week,” Ken recalls, “but I said I was interested in the manufacturing side, so they put me in the salmon fly shop, where my pay went up to £3 and 50 shillings!”
But in 1962, he continues, “I had what you’d call hot feet – I came home one day and asked my dad ‘are there any jobs on the railway?’
“I don’t really know why,” he admits, “but I just felt like doing it – my brother and I were born into that environment.
“I reckon at one time there were about 80 staff at Alnmouth station – Dad came back and told me they wanted a booking lad in the signal box” – the seemingly mundane but very responsible job of keeping the box’s train register up to date. “You started on that and learnt the art of signalling – but I said no – I didn’t want to be cooped up again.
“Then Dad said they needed a fireman – and I said ‘now you’re talking!’”
QUICK PROMOTION
Having passed the obligatory medical in Newcastle, he continues: “I notified Hardy’s that I was leaving, and they said ‘if you ever want to come back, there’ll be a job here for you’ as I’d picked it up so quickly!”
Walking through the doors of Alnmouth shed as a cleaner for the first time in January 1962, he already felt at home.
“I knew all the drivers and they knew me, so I was learning all about locomotives from day one.”
As in his previous job, he swiftly learnt the BR rule book, the art of shovelling, and the ropes on the coaling stage – the latter with the help of two other young men, John Camellerie (of Maltese descent) and Peter Drummond – but it didn’t take long for him to be promoted to the footplate.
After just six weeks, he remembers: “Bob Burrell – the stationmaster at Alnmouth, who was in charge of the district – asked me ‘how are you getting on?’
“I said ‘I’m enjoying it’ – so he asked ‘how are you for passing out?’
“Some of the men had left – one or two drivers and firemen went to Blyth and Newcastle – and there were three firemen who were ready to be promoted to drivers, but they didn’t want it and went into other departments.”