The mobility of railwaymen

[Pyewipe Junction]

(Not sure where to include this, but as it does relate to the LNER, I'll start here.)

One of the things that I always notice when reading the biographies of CMEs is just how mobile most of them were. Even if they stayed with the same company, they still moved around a lot. Some even worked overseas for a while, eg in India. And all this at a time when most people worked for the same company for life, and usually in the same town or district.

Of course, these people were the senior executives of their day. Nevertheless, it caused me to realise that the railways were probably the first form of commercial enterprise large enough to offer a wide pathway of opportunities for advancement, often involving moving around, to those staff who sought it.

I would imagine that staff down to, say, district manager level (I'm hazarding a guess here) would have to move to get promotion, but what about staff at lower levels? For example, could a driver or fireman move to another shed if promotion was slow where they were?

Does anyone know how the LNER adverised its vacancies and how were selections made, by open competition or by recommendation? Was there an LNER Staff Gazette or something similar?

Sorry if most people find this post uninteresting, but I for one find the day-to-day operations of the railways just as interesting as the locomotives!

[Malcolm]

I can't comment about the LNER, but on British Railways there was a list of staff vacancies published internally every week which covered all grades. All my changes in posting and position came from using this.

Malcolm

[Caledonian]

A year or so back 'Steam Days' had an article written by a driver who started at Inverness in which he mentioned a fireman working the Kyle line who was in his late 50s. Apparently this was because he didn't want to move away for the sake of promotion.

The writer himself - a Jim Gordon if I remember rightly - started off at Inverness as a cleaner and got as far as fireman, but then had to move south when steam was withdrawn from there.

[stembok]

If enginemen did not wish to move for any reason then waiting for promotion might literally be a case of "dead men's shoes". At sheds such as Whitby N.Yorks there were supposedly firemen who were almost as old as their drivers, but who did not or could not move for promotion. In the early 1960s quite a few north eastern men took the opportunity of moving south to London, not only on the ER but also to other regions of BR. Promotion in the London area could also be much faster than elsewhere. One Thornaby fireman transferred to Nine Elms to see out steam on the southern. Another senior Heaton (Tyneside)driver went down to King's Cross for his last few years of service. At King's Cross, though there were plenty of cockneys quite a few of the footplatemen had arrived there from elsewhere, the GC, East Anglia etc. Bill Hoole originally came from Liverpool and Ted Hailstone had spent much of his career in West Yorkshire before going to King's Cross for his last seven or eight years of service.

[athanasios]

It seems that mobility of one sort or another could help station staff also to gain promotion. In "A Pillar of the Community" (Tom Quinn's Tales of the Old Railwaymen p.179) Rod Lock relates some of his interesting experiences at various LNER stations in Norfolk. At one posting he rode a bicycle up to twenty miles there and back each day rather than get closer accommodation. At twenty-three years of age he became Stationmaster.

[M&D]

This issue of mobility even applies to the original navies. The railway I have a great desire to restore (YORKSHIRE WOLDS RAILWAY RESTORATION PROJECT: another thread), seems to have attracted navies who built Woodhead and Morley tunnel as well as Burdale tunnel. Its strange even in the lines history station masters / Porter-signalmen seem to have been recruited from all over the UK.? I just think it must be strange even in the 1920s to come from a large station like York or Hull and be transferred to a scenic isolated station like Wharram or Burdale. As the gardens always won prizes, their workload must have been light. Four passenger each way (Malton dodger) and various Chalk and local pickup goods!

[60041]

The mobility of navies was understandable given the nature of the work that they did. They were often highly skilled and in great demand, so would travel to the most attractive jobs and were quite prepared to move considerable distances for an extra few pence per week.
When the great period of canal and railway construction ended, most of them went home to Ireland or the highlands, but some stayed put. Alnwick has quite a few families with Irish names, and it is commonly thought that they are the descendants of the navies who built the Cornhill branch. When it was opened in 1887 there were very few large railway construction projects to go to, so many of the men stayed in the area and found farm work or went to work at the colliery.

[stembok]

On the North Eastern Railway, rural station masters -who were often regarded as pillars of the local community - would sometimes have the concession from the company to act as coal agents within their area. This could be quite a lucrative source of extra income and was at times a disincentive to seeking or accepting promotion to a larger station as it might actually mean a reduction in income. In addition rural staff often had all sorts of sidelines to help financially. A distant relation of mine, who was a ganger on the ECML, supplemented his income with farm work at certain times of the year and while patrolling his section he sometimes carried a folding shotgun or at others a catapult, with both of which he was a crack shot, enabling him to vary the family diet. A brace of rabbits would be swapped for setters of coal kicked off the footplate by a Stockton driver passing his trackside cottage. Another porter, I read of, supplemented his income by knitting and selling woollen jumpers!
The 1920s and 30s were often very difficult for footplate staff who were asked to move, often at very short notice to other areas. One example, a Stockton firemen being told to report to Hull the following Monday. Accommodation? family? -sort it out yourself! If you did not go then you lost your job. That is in addition to the men put back on the promotion ladder at this time,with experienced firemen sometimes put back on to cleaning or even labouring.

[bricam5]

With Loco staff as you signed on as a cleaner,you were given a number and a date and that was your seniority within the region,in my case North Eastern. Unless you were held back or demoted for disciplinary reasons, no one could be promoted above you with a lower seniority date or number.

On the retirement of a driver within the region at any shed, everyone moved up one and the lowest seniority date for a fireman was advertised regionally. if no one from another shed applied then the senior cleaner at that shed was promoted to fireman
Anyone with that seniority date or above could apply from other sheds which is how I found myself in the top link when I moved,to Bradford from Hull Botanic, and three moves way from being a passed man<driver>.

[stembok]

The situation regarding seniority being 'sacred' as noted by bricam5 could and did lead to dissension at times when a man from another shed applied for a post and arrived to fill a vacancy in the links which men at the home shed might have thought should have been theirs by right.
I remember a story from King's Cross where two drivers from Stratford arrived and were placed in one of the top links by virtue of their seniority .Some of the local men would not co-operate over the learning of routes and they had to footplate with men from Leeds, Grantham and Doncaster in order to learn the necessary roads.

[bricam5]

Certainly there was acrimony. At a rough guess, when I was at Botanic Gardens the majority of drivers there came from the Newcastle area. The problem was compounded when a fireman position was advertised and someone in the north east that could afford to move or lodge, applied for the vacancy with a seniority date above that of some of the drivers. This meant, that on arrival at the new shed,within a week or so, he had to take a drivers test and an existing driver at the shed was pushed down to fireman and the most junior fireman was back to a cleaner!

I certainly felt it when I moved to Bradford but for some reason the Bradfordians lived in mortal terror of people from Hull, considering them as all hard types, so I had some black scowls and I heard some muttering but it didn't go beyond that. I didn't push a driver out but every fireman bar three, moved down.

[stembok]

I suppose that the concept of seniority trumping all on the footplate was, like many other features of railway life originally based on the military, where if two soldiers were of equal rank then their date of joining would decide who had seniority and command. When these very large new bodies -the railways - came into being there were not many models of similar size on which to base the organisation, the military being one and this persisted. Examples of railway managers being referred to as 'officers' and into the 1980s the ER management dined in the 'mess'.
It [seniority]was a simple ,to some extent fair, and well understood system ,but it had drawbacks in that people might be promoted purely on service, with no reference to ability or interest in and aptitude for the job - or lack of it! One lovely story comes from a time when a small, sleepy, shed in the Crewe district was closed and the redundant staff offered transfer to Crewe. Some of the drivers were very senior in terms of service and therefore potentially eligible for placing in senior express links on the WCML. Many didn't even bother ,but others took up the challenge, with at times hilarious tales of grappling with trying to learn complex new routes and handling engines much larger than any they had previously been used to. At this point many more gave up.

[skipness]

My dad was a railwayman after his return from being a POW in Germany & Austria. To gain promotion he needed to move and so I lived in Enfield, Hoylandswaine (near Penistone), Maltby (Rotherham), Hull, Peterborough and finally Doncaster.

His job? I'm afraid he was one of those feared people..... the district auditor who made sure that every last halfpenny (or farthing) was properly accounted for.