ECS from Hornsey CS

[rockinjohn]

Hi Mickey little did your driver know in the long off future "push&pull" would be a daily workings to Norwich from the "street".jj

[Mickey]

Yeah jj but back in '79 apart from the 'tramcars' running between Liverpool street & Shenfield and the Liverpool street & Hertford East services it was still diesel hauled trains on the Ipswich-Norwich services and on the Hook of Holland. My driver who was talking about 'Elderly people carrying suitcases stuffed full of twenty pound notes at Liverpool street station' he use to do a couple of weeks working on the 'tramcars' between Liverpool street & Shenfield and then we'd meet up again and both be rostered on a freight diagram together for a week then he'd go off again and do another week or two on the tramcars between Liverpool street & Shenfield.

I remember one day we were both on a freight diagram together (it mite have been the Romford goods?) and we had a Stratford class 31 (I can't recall if it was a toffee apple or not?) and we were in a siding road at either Chadwell Heath or Goodmayes next to the GE main line and we were doing a little bit of shunting just coupling up to some wagons in this siding and he turns and says to me during this bit of shunting that I would be surprised to find how much money is laying around in the street especially after people had been out on the beer on a Friday and Saturday night?. Then the next thing he's got his head out of the drivers window looking back at the shunter and then on looking down he then stops the loco during this bit of shunting and gets out the drivers chair and climbs down off the loco and then he climbs back on the loco and says "Look here a fiver!." He'd only gone and found a £5 note laying be side the track in a siding road!!.

[rockinjohn]

Back in the mid 60's for around 18mnths I drove with a Haulage Contractor as the Goodmayes(BR) parcels delivery truck ,think we did the 7kings parcels dels also,London Transport would park 6/7 buses from Seven Kings bus depot on the roadway leading down to the Goods Yard &the Fyffes depot,the staff @ the station would park their cars on the goods yard roadway also,but most staff were without car,the yard @ this time overgrown &without any wagons,A station officer (not saying)had run out of Petrol in his Ford 100E Popular,and on my wanderings around the up yard saw him about to syphon some petrol from "their"own petrol parcel truck,I stopped him, saying their could be dye in the petrol tank of the BR truck &his car, if thefts were discovered&examined would lead to instant dismissal.We then proceded to syphon 3gallons from my truck tank ,alls well, on arrival back @ our Stepney yard on telling my boss said well done john he always signs you off 8hrs +travelling &asks the Ilford stationmaster for you by name (a well known rail fan& photographer(name escapes me)anyway,also how did you get from WGC to Stratford on the early shifts?jj

[Mickey]

Back in the mid 60's for around 18mnths I drove with a Haulage Contractor as the Goodmayes(BR) parcels delivery truck ,think we did the 7kings...

I thought you was going on to say that the £5 note my driver found laying in Chadwell Heath or Goodmayes good yard belonged to jj?.

also how did you get from WGC to Stratford on the early shifts

A bit hard to remember now jj?. We moved back to London in late August of 1979 but between April to late August of that year the time period that I was at Stratford loco we were still living in WGC so I would have probably rode either the 2:10 or 4:10am staff trains from WGC to Kings Cross and then got a lift in 'the railway van' that went back and forth between Liverpool street & Kings Cross stations between midnight & 6:00am. From late August we were back in Islington and I remember on a number occasions walking from Essex road at around 4:00-4:30am along New North road and down to the Old street roundabout and then walking eastwards towards Moorgate and finally arriving at Liverpool street station at around 5:00-5:30am to get a train out to Stratford station. At the start of January of 1980 I transferred from the loco as a secondman and back into the signalling grade where I had started on the railway eight years earlier in 1972.

[rockinjohn]

Hi Mickey funny you should say about that fiver because......now those were mighty long days for you then & I suppose the reverse on completion of your turn,maybe 34D would have been a good move,now you mention the "trams" to Shenfield I can remember them without yellow warning panels& even earlier a nice lighter shade I think thet called it EMU green with the old "lion&wheel" emblem,the main impression I got was they never went much faster it would appear than 35MPH!(things may have changed with the 25KV conversion), I always checked on the Bow bend that we had no signal checks always Green& when running ECS ex. the "street" to Ilford TMD they still didn't go any faster thru Stratford or Maryland,on to yet another query you mentioned your driver was a "motorman" for part of the month, I assume based @ Ilford TMD yet did turns @30A on Locos,I thought once they accepted the "sparks"like the Southern Electric EMU depots they were "ringfenced" without interchange of Men,it would appear otherwise for the G.E.jj

[Mickey]

With regards to the turns or shifts back then on the loco of the 1970s it was obviously before 'flexible rostering' was introduced by British Rail during the early 1980s and the introduction of Driver Only Operation later on in that decade then British Rail was privatization in the mid 1990s when the newly formed TOCs employed there own drivers to work for them for example Freightliner or EWS or the many passenger companies like C2C or Thameslink or WAGN to name but a few. In B.R. days many drivers and secondmen's diagrams were around 5-6 hours long and once you had done the work that was shown on your diagram it was away home!.

With regards to my regular driver at Stratford as I said he would spend a week or two driving the 'tramcars' on the Liverpool street-Shenfield jobs then he would return and we'd both be on a freight diagram together for a week before he went off on the Liverpool street tramcars again obviously when that happened I would be booked on with other drivers.

[rockinjohn]

Hi Mickey another basic question for you, but not me as a non-railwayman,did you as a second man require signing off on route knowledge?,I assume a "passed fireman"would sign off on those they would be conversant with,& 2nd men keen on the job like yourself would gleen any information they could whilst observing signals /sidings/points etc.for future ref:thnks jj