Colourful characters from the last days of steam.

Though he did not know it at the time, the end of British Rail's steam age was little more than ten years away. It was 1957 and John Smith, 15, a farmer's son from the Derbyshire village of Newton, near Tibshelf, had landed himself a job as a junior clerk at BR's London Midland Region offices, in Middle Furlong Road, Nottingham.

For a lad brought up in the countryside it was quite an experience, catapulting him into an adult world populated by an array of colourful characters, as he reveals in his autobiography Violets.

Among the first he came across was C1aude. "He was particularly bright and good with figures," recalls John, who went on to become managing director of the Bell-Fruit gaming machines company and is now a semi-retired consultant for them, from his base in Egmanton, near Newark.

"He had a habit of jerking his head back when walking across the office, if he was under time pressure and thinking hard."

Claude, it turned out, had a famous sister. Betty Driver had already made a name for herself as a big band singer. In 1969 — the year BR abolished steam for good — she made her debut as Betty Turpin in Coronation Street, becoming one of the show's favourites, renowned for serving Betty's Hot Pot in the Rover's Return.

Another of the characters in the BR office was Arnold Sidebothom. "I never discovered what he actually did during my three-and-a-half years in that office," writes John. "But I remember his sideline. In an age of smoke and smoking, Arnold was a champion of the briar pipe, but the little packages it became my custom to pick up for him from the specialist tobacconist in Wheeler Gate did not consist solely of pipe tobacco.”

"Almost everyone in the office smoked cigarettes, especially in the afternoon. And the little brown bag I picked up for Arnold contained a selection of the most popular fags of the day. “Arnold didn’t lend out fags or provide a charitable service. He sold them individually and at a mark-up. Everyone knew he was on to a nice little earner, but when one needs a fag, one needs a fag and if nothing else his supply never faltered. Arnold was hated but happy. It was my first encounter with a true entrepreneur."

Working in Nottingham, but still living with his parents in Tibshelf, meant long days for John. He'd have to leave his home to cycle the three miles to the station on the old Great Central railway, before 7am. Then it was 15 miles by train to Nottingham, and 15 miles back.

All this travelling meant young John did not get home until gone 7.30pm.
Additionally, there was half-day working on Saturdays, too. But John became absorbed with the job, the people around him and the great locomotives that worked the lines around Nottingham.

"Some of the job titles were fascinating," he writes. "There were, among others, fire raisers (who built the fires to get the engines into steam), fire droppers (who put the fires out), plate-layers, boilermakers and shunters."

Steam worked its magic on John. "I started to appreciate the engines that hauled the great loads and sometimes I wandered through the massive motive power sheds to get a better look at these fantastic examples of engineering," he said.

The little 0-4-2 and 2-4-2 engines appealed to him, but not more than the giant Class 8Fs and 9s. "Their magnificence was not dinted by the stillness of being at rest in the great engine sheds. Nor was their dignity impinged by the ant-like men in boiler suits who crawled over and inside, maintaining them."

John left to go to work for the Electricity Board, in Mansfield, and after qualifying as an accountant went on to work all over the world.
But steam had got into his soul and while it was ushered out in Britain in 1969, that wasn't the case everywhere.

John adds: "Years later, when the last working beasts in the UK had long since taken a dead-end journey to the breakers yard, I was literally reduced to tears when my taxi, entering Cochin, in Southern India,
came to a shuddering stop. "It was to allow an 8F to pass over the level crossing, hauling a gargantuan load of coal. What the British introduced, the ex-colonials had the sense to retain."

Reproduced with kind permission of the author John Brunton.

Violets can be bought from John’s website www.jgwalkersmith.co.uk  for £11.99. The website has links to a synopsis of the work and a brief note about the author. Anyone not wishing to access the web can obtain a copy from the author directly on 01777 871226 or 07966 22594. Violets is also obtainable from Amazon at £14.99 or from the public library where it is listed on their supplier’s website “Askeys”