Malcolm wrote:Hmmmmm. I also seem to recall that happening at Tyne Yard once on my shift.
Learnt a lot of new words that day (none that could be considered nice you understand).
Supervisor bumped into the clerk who was feeding the whole yard into the card reader to get a printout of what was where. (Oops!?)
Malcolm
If you worked at Tyne Yard we may have a mutual aquaintence. Did you know an Ian Short used to work there until he moved to the S&T due to Ill health. He was Stores Supervisor at the Westgate road stores in Newcastle.
One other great BR invention was the AFFF foam fire extingisher. A joint venture with Chubb i belive. So much oif this list rings true.You could also tell the old timers in the S&T as they wore the old Blue overalls and all us new ones had the orange ones. The year end spend still takes place on Network rail to this day. Many people who work on the railway today would give their eye teeth if BR could come back as NR seem to have forgotton everything that has gone before and are only now starting to rediscover that the way BR did things was not so daft after all. We were all one big family then working to run trains to get people from A to B not to line some companies pockets. BR worked wonders with very little money and although many staff were made redundant when big works closed they would try and find you a job within first. Rose tinted glass, maybe a bit but moral is pretty poor in the railway industry these days and in general it wasn't back then.
I participated in what you would call one of several 'focus groups' held by NR to discover what the staff really thought of them. Proceedings started off with me saying (mistakenly, now, perhaps) that they were probably the best of a bad bunch. The interviewer was surprised at that and asked for more details - Told her 'I was never ashamed to say I worked for BR, but this bunch...' Never mind, Mr Coucher (his name was pronounced 'kewcha' on Radio 4 today - hooray), climb into your Aston Martin and drive home
Oh hu hu! Cowboy! Yes, I remember that incident. Very well.
Cowboy. Now there's a name to stir old Tyne Yard memories.
Speaking of High visibility vests 52A, can you remember the name of the S&T supervisor who used to take his old English Sheepdog everywhere with him and had the dog wear a high vis vest?
Malcolm
The world is seldom what we wish it to be, but wishes don't change it.
Billy Barker was Relief Traffic Manager and as you say Ben went everywhere with him complete with high vis vest!
One incident I remember was when he and another chap attended to a train failure and Bill left in the train giving the other chap the keys to his van to return to Tyne Yard. Alas Ben wouldn't let the other chap into the van and he had to wait for someone to give Bill a lift back to pacify the dog!
