Human face of the railway works

The sawmill foreman, George Higgs, who would retire in February of the following year and loved all wildlife, removed a board from the side of the fearsome machine and replaced it with a glass viewing window.

In the days that followed, a steady stream of railway workers would snatch a break from their often backbreaking toil and visit the little family of birds.

This anecdote is among many that would have been lost to time were it not for the work of railway historian and author Peter Timms, who lives in Lawn.

He is the author of In and Around Swindon Works and a new volume, Swindon Works 1930-1960.

Profits from sales go to Macmillan Cancer Support.

“Originally there was just going to be one book,” said 60-year-old Peter, “but I got so much extra information that I then added this second one.

“They’re not actually called parts one and two but that’s what it amounts to. It’s the same subject, Swindon Works from 1930 to 1960.

“The reason I started in 1930 is that for anything before that date I’d have to refer to material that’s already been published.

“I didn’t see the point. Even if you can find somebody who is 90-odd years old now that worked in there, they’re not going to remember anything before the 1930s.

“It finishes in 1960 because after that the Works was being run down quite dramatically. I really wanted to stick to the heyday.”

The books include plenty of nuts and bolts information about the running of the Works, but the bulk of that information is drawn from interviews the author conducted with people who worked there.

There are stories of apprentices starting on a few shillings a week, bosses whose three-figure annual salaries enabled them to live in Old Town - and one man who lived in Old Town but was a blue collar worker.

He was known as Granny, and the new book includes a reminiscence about him: “Granny ate nothing but bread and jam at work, and whenever questioned about his diet he would change the conversation and mention his house, which was in Goddard Avenue.”

Peter explained: “He was just one of the rank and file but I suppose he’d inherited the house from his mother and father and now liked to keep up the pretence of being better than everyone else.

“The people of New Swindon that lived down in the town lived in rather more humble conditions.

“They used to call Goddard Avenue Bloater Avenue because they were so careful with their money to try to keep up this image of being better that all they could afford was bloaters [a cheap variety of fish] for their tea.

“That’s a fairly common story in the town, so it’s almost certainly true.

“It’s amazing the people you talk to. I was talking to a fellow only this week and he told me that at night, in the war, because of the blackout they used to have to do the Crocodile Walk. I’d never heard this before.

“They’d all get together in a single line and hold on to the fellow in front’s shoulder, and the person at the very head of this line had a dim torch. He could then guide this line of people to the canteen.”

The new book includes memories of the bewildering variety of Works departments, including the locomotive and carriage works, the foundry, the pay office, the smithy, the sawmill, the machine tool installers, the draughtsmen, the office staff and the internal drivers of the tractors, mobile cranes and other vehicles used to ferry items and people from place to place ‘Inside’.

Bustling industrial scene from Swindon’s railway works

We learn, for example, that many railway families kept chickens or rabbits for food, but the rabbits roaming the Works timber yard were left alone. Aside from hunting them being against company rules, their sawdust-heavy diet meant they made for poor eating.

There is also the tale of the wagon of red sand whose doors froze solid outside the brass foundry during the dreadful winter of 1947. Somebody had the idea of lighting a fire undeneath, not realising that the wagon had a timber floor...

We also learn that female staff turning 21 were given a symbolic ‘key of the door’ forged on site.

Peter trained as an engineer at Vickers before becoming an operating assistant at Princess Margaret Hospital. He retired a few years ago, by which time he had already begun interviewing the 90 or so Works veterans whose memories form the backbone of his books.

Railway history has fascinated him since he was a young man in the 1960s.

He said: “Most people that write about railway history, I feel, are just compiling information that’s been used before. I didn’t want to do that.

“The reason I started it was that I felt the Works had never been written about in sufficient detail.”

His sources are aged from their 70s to their 90s these days, and their numbers are inevitably declining.

“It’s a great shame but it makes you realise how worthwhile it is to speak to them,” said Peter.

The new book, published by Amberley, costs £17.99 and is available from Pen and Paper in Victoria Road, Steam, WH Smith and Waterstones.

Updates are planned and Peter welcomes contact from people with information. He can be reached on 01793 436902.