Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Frary, TP (O2008.10) |
| Interviewee | T P Frary (TP) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR), Trish Goldsmith (TG) |
| Date | 20/11/2008 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2008.10
Interviewee: T P Frary (TP)
Date: 20th November 2008
Venue: 108 Ladywood Road
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR), Trish Goldsmith (TG)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Corin Jones
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
It’s now half past 10 nearly because Trish found Halleys Ridge No.108 instead of 108 Ladywood Rd. So we are now in the home of Mr TP Frary - famous initials to any train spotter in Hertford years ago - because we want to talk anorak stations, in Hertford as well as some background on his life and times. 20th November 2008, Peter Ruffles and Trish Goldsmith.
We might start, not at the beginning, but at the point when the public came to know you in Hertford because you were for a while the station master, what were you doing then, what was the extent of the job and the role?
TF: Well, it was a dramatic change from my previous one which was Ashwell & Morden station. I had a staff of four, here at Hertford I had a staff of X numbers, train drivers, firemen, porters, foremen, cleaners, track people, and so on, came under my control to some greater or lesser degree.
PR: Quite a compliment/complement [not sure which!]. Roughly, what era, what date was this?
TF: 1958 or 9 to 1965.
PR: Yes, I was going to make a stab at 1960-ish because that’s when I have that recollection. Yes. So where were you based physically, did you have an office to operate from?
TF: When I arrived there was no office, I had to share, I had to put my papers in the booking office which as you remember is the old wooden structure downstairs. My chief came round and said let’s go to your office. I said impossible, I haven’t got one so wheels started turning immediately and they then converted what was the ladies’ waiting room into my office by partitioning the back so that they could still use the toilets. So, I gained an office.
PR: That was at Hertford North Station on platforms 2 & 3. So the job that you were appointed to was Station Master at Hertford North, did you have any interest in the Great Northern, Hartham?
TF: Yes, that was under my charge as well. All the way round, past the old station right round to the Prince Regent Tar works and the gas works so way beyond Hertford East Station.
PR: And Hertford East was someone else’s?
TF: Yes, the job prior to my arrival had been the job of one man, both stations, so they split the job and left him where he was and planted me at Hertford North.
PR: So the GN & GE had united under British Rail(ways).
TF: Yes, if you really wanted to you could take a train from Kings X to Liverpool Street via Hertford
[transcriber’s note: In an 1866 accident in Welwyn Tunnel – GN trains pass through Hertford on a route which comprises London, Hatfield, Cowbridge, Hertford East, Broxbourne, Cambridge, Peterborough then onto the GN line. Return journey being the same in reverse].
PR: And I suppose there were times when that knowledge that that link was there, during the war for instance, would have been quite important. But you went beyond the engine shed at Hertford East beside it presumably and then there was a crossing in the road.
TF: Well beyond that, a good quarter of a mile where the old gas works were.
PR: A semi arc across the road.
TF: A very extended siding… [then the loud hissing on the tape blocked most of the next passage of the recording]
You’d have to go beyond the station and reverse back. In the meantime I had charge of the bit from Hertford North to Welwyn Garden City.
PR: Right, we’d better organise this a little, I suppose we might have been criticised by Eve for making, for jumping around a bit, but I think we’ll just finish off with the gas works area and then come in to the more central bits.
So was there much business on the gas works (siding)?
TF: Gas works no, Prince Regents Tar, some, a number of tankers going in there and fuel famously got reported in the Mercury because the fuel was held back in a bad winter – it couldn’t physically get down there and somebody came from the Mercury to me asking why.
PR: And the reason you couldn’t do it was because of?
TF: Everything else was going on.
PR: Yes, [19]61/’62 was it when all the best railway magazine photographs [probably ‘62/’63] with snow on various, no, so you were just too busy with other things.
TF: Concentrating on people.
PR: I don’t recall ever seeing any traffic movement on that where the rails went across Mead Lane I’d had to be pretty alert to have spotted it.
TF: There was a bit more traffic at the old station which was called Cowbridge. We handled scrap metal and sugar beet, coal, not in vast quantities.
PR: But there was quite a bit of shunting movement – I may be thinking earlier than your time the clink, clink, clink of things banging together and Mr Lawrence, Bill Lawrence.
TF: Bill Lawrence – Uncle Bill.
PR: Uncle Bill you called him; he made a recording.
TF: Oh, did he? Oh, good.
PR: You’re joining him in the same archive. He used to let us boys very occasionally come up in a goods van to Cowbridge Station to Hertford North and get off by Pop Gerardine’s signal box. George G also made a recording so you’re reunited with old friends, or difficult employees?
TF: No, those two weren’t. A bit eccentric perhaps but not difficult. George was useful. He used to take over the signal box Watton at Stone.
PR: Oh did he. He told us, of course, of the story of the royal family during the war sometimes in Molewood Tunnel. And voice recognition – his, and two others, it was important that only two or three of them were on duty at the time the royal train was going because they needed to be able to recognise by some telephone system his voice in order to accept a command.
[Hissing blocked the next passage]
So Station Master conjures up morning suit and top hat when the royal people arrive – they didn’t very often come to Hertford, but what was your day roughly involving, what did you have to do?
TF: I was a general dogsbody. You had to be able to do every job on the station. Telling people what to do, where things were, the times the trains went, in the booking office if the clerk was missing or sick, even taking over the signal box if the signal man couldn’t be there. And I frequently worked the Watton at Stone box and the Bayford box, so every task on the station, virtually. [but he ‘never got the hang’ of handling shunting].
PR: Ah! Was a chap called Peter Rose there in your day? (Yes) yes, we used to watch him take the N2s off the front of steam-hauled, in the bay and then he’d come and couple up at the front. He died only recently. He was living at Sele Farm at the end of his life. We didn’t record him but I did give him a picture I’d taken with my little black & white camera down on the platform – he was down there filling the gap between the engine. So he was around in your day?
TF: Yes, and people like Smock Reason, George Atherton.
PR: Yes, lived in the Walk.
TF: And signalman Alf Pacey.
PR: Trish knows about Alf.
TF: His big train set?
TG: I never knew Alf; I just knew his wife.
TF: He lived just off Beane Rd [Molewood Rd] I was thinking of the ticket collector who had the train set who lived at the end of Molewood.
PR: Oh, Walduck.
TF: Yes! [he had railway items in his house and garden]
PR: Oh, so was Alf there in your day, I thought he might have retired before that.
TF: I certainly left before Alf did.
PR: He died quite quickly after he retired.
TF: I lost track with people because of pastures new.
PR: You’d better just say what those pastures new were, out of the railway
TF: Well, no I was made redundant when they did away with station masters and put there assistant area managers. For one year towards the end of my career I was on work study. I had two children who were attending the Sir Frederic Osborne Grammar School [probably when it was WGC High School] and we didn’t want to move then so I had to look for another job. Eventually ended up in Addises, Ware Rd. Another long story.
PR: Yes! We’ll stick with the railways for the time being.
TF: I stayed there five years and then I went to County Hall. Stationmaster to wholesale service manager with Addis, from that to Finance Assistant Credit Control/Other Things at County Hall and there I stayed doing lots of other jobs.
PR: So, the signal boxes were at pretty frequent intervals along the Loop?
TF: Well, Watton at Stone was the one, there was a derelict one at Stapleford and then the next one was at the junction at Stevenage.
PR: Yes, Langley [Junction].
TF: Then Hertford North then Bayford, Cuffley and so on.
PR: So if you were in Bayford Box, two tracks and no sidings?
TF: One siding. There was some control from the box for the siding at least to allow you to use the hand switch on the ground.
PR: So if you were on duty at Bayford you would just have to monitor the passing of north/south and there would be someone there all day?
TF: That was a part-time job. Primarily day-light hours.
PR: Yes. And then when it went out of action how was the operation continued, were the signals
TF: They’d all be put at pass, the section so-called would then be from Hertford North to Cuffley. Similarly Hertford North to Stevenage.
PR: Did Watton have more other traffic, as it were. You didn’t have the passenger stuff to Watton.
TF: It re-opened as an experiment; I can’t remember the exact date. Prior to that, a bit of agricultural traffic and a small fuel-oil distribution, domestic.
PR: We used to do naughty things in the tunnel like walk through it [Molewood]. When you’re always looking for adventure, you have to make it by taking risks. We sometimes had to get into the alcoves. I’m really talking about before your time. Anoraks and train spotters knew the enemy.
TF: We had other enemies – we had all the boys from Goldings.
PR: Oh, of course.
TF: Times they would fix the signals, stole the lanterns – it’s only an oil lamp.
PR: Let’s mention oil lamps for a minute. They were maintained by whom and how often?
TF: One of the staff at Hertford. We had a range of them, literally dozens of them at Watton at Stone as well.
PR: And how would he get to the signal box? Hitch a lift?
TF: Very rarely, it’s a walking job. I’ve done the Watton – you get as far as you can on the road and then have to walk across the fields. One’s up Perry Wood Lane and there’s another one – if you go out to the north [inaudible] on the Stevenage Rd there’s a field on your left and at the end of that field and that virtually led you right to the signal.
PR: And how often would that need to be attended to?
TF: Once a week.
PR: And it would burn?
TF: A week.
[next part lost to hiss]
If you were sensible you would have taken a spare lamp.
PR: They’re quite heavy?
TF: Not too bad, a 4” square at the base.
PR: They’d be smaller than a tail lamp at the end of a…
TF: In a way, yes.
PR: Bayford station had special expertise in oil lamps because the station platforms were lit by oil. Today’s commuters will find that hard to believe.
TF: And that would have gone on for five more years after I left.
PR: When electrification came in.
TF: I actually came to Hertford North on the premise that electrification would be done in my time but it was deferred so in my time I saw a mixture of steam and diesel and then not too long after I left, another five years, electric.
PR: Yes. You mentioned sugar beet, down at Cowbridge Station. Before that let’s just say that the GE railway was the first to arrive in Hertford, 1843, then it moved from the 1843 terminus to the present one in 1888 but the rival company, the GN was 15 years later and established its station first of all in Cowbridge. [in 1858 it was a temporary station replaced by a permanent structure in 1862].
TF: Then of course the railway went: Cowbridge to Welwyn Garden City and on to?
PR: Ayot, oh yes.
TF: East to west. So you could get to London by that means.
PR: Yes. It would be Hatfield originally because the two branches came in and joined the mainline where WGC later came, but it wasn’t there at the construction. Sugar beet on Hartham – where would that beet have come from?
TF: I’ve really no idea, I left all that work and decision making to Bill Lawrence, who was effectively the foreman.
PR: It’s interesting because it’s arable land around here but tends to be grains rather than beet. An early memory for me was loading sugar beet into rail waggons when your hands had the sugar beet which was so cold that you didn’t know which was your hand and which was the beet. And I was earning money on that at Hertingfordbury Station when the farmer’s tractor would come in loaded then presumably that beet would have found its way, not straight off to London, but to Bill Lawrence at Hartham to organise.
TF: In all probability yes, because the passenger service had long gone when I came into it but there were a couple of freight trains and the rubbish trains.
PR: Oh yes!
TF: We used to have one a day, on average.
PR: And that rubbish would be coming in from London, would it? Better explain to the listeners in the year 2050 the configuration of the tracks at Hertford North. I’ll just say and you tell me if I get it wrong. The original line came from Hartham Station [Cowbridge] along the back of Port Vale, beside Beane Rd, climbed up towards Hertford North.
TF: Almost over the top of the Sele Arms [opposite the station, now, in 2021 demolished for housing at the back of Cedar Close].
PR: Yes, rail bridge there. And then if you stayed on that track, didn’t go onto the Loop Line.
TF: Yes, it passed the back of the signal box and dipped down the other side past Webbs Glove Factory and then through the viaduct. [Transcriber’s comment: If TF is referring to the viaduct near HTFC then it would come before Webbs Glove Factory – now Tanners Crescent]
PR: And under the newer tracks to Kings Cross.
TF: And then straight over to Hertingfordbury first, then Cole Green.
PR: A signal box at Cole Green! Not in your day, but that was the bigger station. Then it went on to what became the dump under the A414 WGC until very recently.
TF: And the dump is roughly south and west of where the domestic waste tip is, the whole of that area was the dump. There were tracks laid inside it.
PR: Oh, then a rail crossing and then into Welwyn Garden. That was where the service from Hertford, a bit before your time, finished. In previous times it was Hatfield, and then as you say on to Welwyn [then I think he means that you crossed a platform to join the Luton/Dunstable line]. Similar scale branch – I think they ceased passenger traffic at about the same time.
TF: Could be, yes, I don’t know much about that area at all.
PR: A treat for us at home, taken by our next-door neighbour, Gert Turnbull was that if we were well-behaved we would be taken on the train from Hertford North to Hertingfordbury 1½d and then walked home past near where we are today and that would be an afternoon treat.
And the Turnbull family also told a story that they came out here to Panshanger, Lord and Lady Desborough’s and there’d been some kind of shoot or an open day and important guests came down from London. They walked [the Turnbulls] to Panshanger but after spending the time there they thought they might go back on the train and they went down with lots of these well-dressed ladies from the City and their husbands, on to Cole Green Station which was the one for Panshanger and one of them was sent to the booking office at Cole Green to ask the price of the ticket to Hertford. And they all pretending they were as grand as everybody else on this platform but the person who’d gone to the booking office came back and shouted across to the other platform “It’s three ha’pence, Gert, shall we go?” and that vulgar behaviour became their family folklaw!
Yes, there used to be a little two coach train drawn normally from Hertford North by an N1 locomotive whereas the ones we were having on the suburban line with their condensing apparatus going under the tunnels to Moorgate, they were N2s 695ers. It was either an N1 or an N7. Down at Hartham you tended to have an N7-69696 was a favourite one with Bill – all that detail before your era, it was the anorak train-spotting time for us. But if you were on the railway bridge to Fordwich Rise the express goods came through at about 8 o’clock, often with a named locomotive on it, an A3 and we used to go for the 8 o’clocker. A favourite train spotting spot was, and you can still watch the trains today was the passenger bridge, pedestrian bridge which goes up from Sele Rd to Fordwich at the end of your station platform.
TF: The bridge itself was a… [inaudible], forever cleaning graffiti off of it.
PR: Yes! Wish they would today. It’s still bad. But that’s where we might see an A3 – Woodwinder used to come. But you would earlier in the day know when they’d finish their shunting operations down at Cowbridge Station because you’d hear, a long time before it appeared, and then the pull because it was quite a pull-up, then you’d see it coming and see the smoke, pulling quite a lot of waggons, just atmospheric, acoustics.
TF: Talking about atmospherics we sometimes stored the rubbish trains at Cowbridge and you could expect a deluge of complaints the next day.
PR: Yes, and plenty of houses round there, as well. McMullens had tracks into their [brewery] – were they using them in your day?
TF: Oh yes. My recollection is that they had occasional coal trucks in. I don’t recall them sending out any cases, or empties [brewery waste] so, not a lot. Bill Lawrence would have been the expert on all of that.
PR: I don’t know whether I asked him the right questions when we sent to see him! But the McMullens siding wasn’t to the back of the Victorian Brewery that’s there to this day [now Sainsbury’s] it was the other side, behind the Unicorn pub – the one I’m thinking of had big gates [now McMullens modern brewery] but there was a coal yard that must have been serviced also by Bill Lawrence the site now has been taken in by McMullens. Oh well, we’ve done a wonderful tour.
TF: At the end of Chamber Street there was a scrap yard, there are houses there now [there seems also to have been a line there].
PR: As we’ve been talking I’ve been remembering other little bits. There was once a bolted horse that bolted when it was delivering bread in George St or Russell St, Port Vale, and it charged up and bashed through a fence at the end of the street and took its cart down onto the track, in Victorian times, well before you, and somebody had the presence of mind to go and stop the passenger train coming from the GN station – he ran up the track [waving?].
TF: That was one of my major problems – animals on the line. But the funniest one: I’d been out to a dinner so I was in a dinner jacket and we lived in North Rd at the time. Just having a night cap and there was a knock at the door and it was my colleague at the station – Boss, there’s a horse on the line between Stapleford and Watton at Stone. So I said all right, I’ll deal with it. So I took my car as far as Stapleford and then I walked all the way along the track and a horse had obviously been there because there were some obvious signs but the horse had long since gone. It occurred to me later that if I’d been stopped by the police in a monkey suit and asked what I was doing – walking on the rail track looking for a horse!
PR: Now what else? Is there anything else, Trish, I’ve forgotten?
TG: I’m more interested in the day to day running of the station, what time did you go off duty for instance?
TF: Normally around 8.30 depending on what’s happening. If there was something special on then I would go in early, take an extended lunch and go in later.
TG: So how long was your day?
TF: Normally about 8 hours. But I was on call. I lived in Fordwich Rise most of the time so I could be there in a matter of minutes. In fact I had to live there because they refused to let me live further away.
TG: And most of the communication would be done by phone between signal boxes and they had a bell system, didn’t they?
TF: Yes, a telegraph system. Tracks are fitted in sections and you have only one train on each section at any given time. Normally I would go in and deal with correspondence unless there was some kind of staff [meeting?] to be attended first. Then a not too obvious inspection of the whole area in Hertford North then later in the day I would visit the satellites – Cowbridge or Watton at Stone, if necessary. I could be called on to do any little job but fortunately I had two foremen so I was left to do with statistics, correspondence, reports on accidents and there were quite a few – always minor stuff. But then you’d get the more serious ones like the engine going off the end of the bay.
TG: I’ve seen photographs of that.
[Hissing volume increased obliterating the next passage]
While you were working at Hertford North - what was the timetable like – how frequently was there a train going up to London, for instance?
TF: Then, it was every hour. It would vary, more trains at peak times. Yes, and between the peaks and overnight, very little happening.
TG: How many goods trains would go past during the day? I suppose it varied from day to day.
TF: Well, it would, depending what was required on the main line, bearing in mind they had a full track from virtually Kings Cross to Stevenage.
PR: Sele Arms – station local – did you have good relations with the Sele Arms?
TF: Well, I wasn’t a great drinker so I hadn’t too much to do with them, except to kick my staff out. It was a problem, a bit too close. But they didn’t get to a point where they couldn’t cope with the work.
TG: Round about 1960, what would the train fare have been to London?
TF: 2/6d [I think he is saying].
PR: What about the station bookstall, that was WHSmiths.
TF: Alex Ginner/Jenner was the manager.
PR: Ah yes, he lived nearby, didn’t he?
TF: I think so, yes, North Rd.
PR: That was obviously independent of station operations?
TF: Oh, absolutely. And of course the bicycle store at the bottom of the stairs – do you remember?
PR: Yes!
TF: You had bookstall one side, booking office the other and at the bottom of the stairs.
PR: Yes, you went up the step and into the area of the booking office there, and at the far end you could leave the bikes. And then there was the dark tunnel to the lift.
TF: Yes, indeed that was kept very quiet, I don’t know why.
PR: We discovered the private tunnel more recently when the town council were trying more recently to put pressure on to give passenger access.
TF: I always thought that there should be. It was very old indeed, really only suitable for parcels and people who knew what they were doing.
PR: Yes, it was a very expensive refurbishment.
TF: But in those days we used to use it to bring parcels down to the booking office and it was all right because we had quite a busy parcel traffic, the one I particularly remember was old man Shephard from Hertingfordbury, he had all his stuff in there every morning and heaven help you if it was late.
PR: Yes, well he and his son.
TF: Oh, Harry is still [with us?]
PR: The book stall used to have someone called Bertie Hebbes as WHSmith’s manager and he retired before your time and the newspapers came on the train and he would pick them up from platforms 2 & 3 and cross the track to No.1 and then over the embankment so they dropped down at the bookstall itself rather than all the palaver of the lift and through the tunnel.
TF: As far as I could recall they came the correct way.
PR: Yes, well when you were in charge they probably had to. And the signalling was always semaphore signalling.
TF: Yes, indeed.
PR: You can see how the gantries change over the years, there was one at the end of Platform 1 with three signals – one down to the Hertingfordbury line presumably, one into the sidings and one straight ahead.
TF: The one into the sidings was also the access to the route to Hertingfordbury because that was all in that direction.
PR: Oh, was it. I remember there were three and one of them you never saw used. Then it disappeared and there were two for a long time.
TF: And then there was another one on the end of 2 & 3 with two.
PR: Yes, and they had also had three, one above the other. I wasn’t really train spotting in the way that young people were in your day, I was actually too old for it, when you’re 9, 10, 11, 13 a good decade earlier.
TF: Did Bill Lawrence tell you that the end of what is now Platform 1 appeared in the Will Hay film.
PR: No.
TF: Oh, yes, I was led to believe that film “Oh, Mr Porter” was filmed at Hertingfordbury.
PR: Yes, I’d heard that, but they got a bit of Hertford North as well?
TF: Yes, the old water tank was there as well, wasn’t it?
[then something about a brazier]
PR: You’d see on a winter’s day red hot coals.
TG: They used to put down something when it was foggy, didn’t they?
TF: Ah you’re talking about a detonator.
TG: And how far would that be between stations?
TF: At the signal box they would have a lever handle on the floor. They’d pull it up and that shot two detonators onto the track ready to be exploded, [in frosty weather?]. Other than that detonators were free-standing, they were discs about that big, 2” let’s say, with a couple of lead straps. And you literally placed it on the track. And all the trains would have carried those and we would have had a stock at the station. So if for any reason whatever we needed to warn a train of problems or danger they you’d whizz out there quickly. If you could, you put three out, 10 yds apart. And guards and drivers were instructed to do that. Trains always carried instructions as to what drivers, firemen, guard had to do in any emergency.
TG: If they broke down or something they’d have to have some way of warning on-coming trains?
TF: Yes, that would be the first thing to do before going off to report a problem. A tree on the line – the first thing you would do was to set off the detonators.
PR: There’s that lovely 1920s timber wooden shelter on Platform 1 which has remained. Often in its life it wasn’t used when Platform 1 wasn’t used at all. They did apply for planning permission to take it away but it was refused.
TF: Oh, great.
PR: It’s a decent bit of timber but no heating in there. There was a ladies and general waiting room, wasn’t there? Coal fire.
TF: They worked when I was there. They subsequently changed those for electric fires which you’d hit the button and it came on and it stayed on for a decided length of time.
PR: So who would have been responsible for lighting the fire?
TF: Porters, or anybody available.
PR: And making it up during [the day?]
TF: Yes. And the staff were required to maintain a supply of boiling water for the engines, that was a peculiarity I’d not come across before.
PR: I suppose you’d find a chimney sweep?
TF: I have an idea the staff did that.
PR: Well, it wasn’t a two-storey building, yes. I would guess they [the staff] were very versatile.
TF: They maintained the garden, the flowers.
TG: And white-washed pebbles – oh wonderful. I wasn’t sure Hertford North lent itself to that.
TF: There was a gardens competition, best kept station gardens, hanging baskets and gladioli beds and so on.
PR: And then there was the white lining of the platform edge with a brush that had an angle. I suppose that’s what happens today.
TF: I doubt it.
TG: They have a yellow line now, don’t they, you stand behind it.
PR: It seemed to have been whitewashed quite frequently.
TF: Yes it would have been, I think we tried to do it every couple of months.
PR: Well, have we had our fill?
TG: I think we probably have.
PR: Let’s just, before we go, ask how you came into the railway business in your early years.
TF: Well in a very casual way, bearing in mind that I lived in north Norfolk at the time, in a tiny village five miles from Wells-next-the-Sea. I left school and I had no idea what I would do. Then my uncle called and, I’ll explain that he was a guard on the railway at Wells, and he said there’s a vacancy for a booking clerk at Wells, why don’t you apply for it? So I did, but it wasn’t instant acceptance, I had to go and see the station master there and answer some questions and then I was carted up to Norwich to HQ to meet the great white chief, Barrington Ward/Waugh and he interviewed me, he was a kindly gentleman.
Subsequently I got a letter saying could I start on such and such a day and I wrote back and said yes I can and nobody told me to do so, so I didn’t go in on the first day and my uncle came tearing round and said where were you? I said they didn’t tell me to start, they just asked me if I could. So I started a day late.
TG: How did you get to come to Hertford?
TF: It’s a long story. Whilst at Wells I asked to go on the relief staff to get more experience. They used to send me out to various stations doing relief work then I got called up. Two years in the RAF and back to Wells. The friend who was to become my brother-in-law, he was applying to be a station master and he said to me, why don’t you? So I said I will.
But again, it didn’t go exactly according to plan, they put me out again as a relief station master at a little tiny place called [inaudible] just outside [inaudible]. So I did about four or five months stint there, and I learned a lot, believe me, about staff and temperaments, the naming of trains and so on until a place came up just north of Peterborough. I applied for those 2 or 3 weeks before I got married. I had the interview on the Tuesday and I was getting married on the Saturday and on April 1st when I was on honeymoon I got a telegram saying I got the job but being April 1st I didn’t believe it.
Anyway after a phone call it became a fact. So we curtailed our honeymoon to go and look at the place because we’d never been to look at the empty house, the job generally, and buy some furniture. We had originally planned to live with my in-laws and here we were 60 miles away from where we were going to live. So that was the start of my station master’s career. We’d been there 2 years and I was looking for promotion so I applied to a place called Corby Glen on the main line and I was only there 8 or 9 months when another job at the same grade came up at Ashwell & Morden. And I was there longer than I’d hoped. But Beeching intervened so the number of jobs I could apply for were dramatically cut. So I came to Hertford North, that’s it.
PR: I’ve got a picture, somewhere, that you’re in, cycling by Eddie Roche’s shop, in St Andrew St.
TF: Going to the bank. That was one of my tasks – the money we made at Hertford North had to go to Barclays.
PR: But you had what was a fascination for us – a very modern bicycle with a smaller wheel – we used to have 26” wheels.
TF: Oh I didn’t know I was unique in that.
PR: Like a new car in town! This trendy bike. There you are, anyway, we must pull the plug.
Recording ends