As I was growing up, in the industrialised north west of England, yard shunting was a musical sound ever present in the background – which sadly has now been replaced by the hum of traffic noise.

I fondly remember the toots from the whistles of shunting locos as they busily went about their work, all this from a childhood spent in a swirl of choking smoke and strange smells from the factories and chemical plants.

The clanking and jangling of a shunting yard is a sound that had disappeared entirely from our lives. Those that are old enough to remember that distinctive sound as it kept them awake in the early hours of the morning may not be so sentimental.

Shunting was carried out around the clock, 365 days a year, and in Swindon the shunting in and around the works was a logistic operation all of its own.

The job of “shunter” was a role carried out predominantly by men but, during the war, women were employed doing this dangerous and demanding task; carried out in all weathers. Shunters were known to be very agile and lean, possibly because they ran everywhere as they assembled several 40-plus goods wagon freight trains simultaneously!

It was not uncommon for shunters to be injured and killed as wagons were shunted either by hump shunting or loose shunting.

Hump shunting was when wagons were pushed into the yard over a built-up hump, they were not coupled to each other or the loco that pushed them over the hump.

They then ran down the other side of hump propelling themselves into the yard by their own weight and gravity! Loose shunting is when they were propelled into the yard at speed by the loco, that then stopped dead and the wagons that were loose (not being coupled to each other or the loco) would then “free wheel” into the yard under their own momentum.

The shunter had to be 100% alert during this tricky and silent operation.

Yards were compact with multiple tracks laid into them as some had mainlines running alongside them; stepping backwards without looking all around was risky, and this was not helped by signal wires or points; all likely to trip up the shunter.

At night time yards and sidings were poorly lit and in fog or bad weather they were treacherous places, to say the least.

Before shunting poles were used, shunters had to climb under and couple or uncouple each wagon by hand.

The pole saved many lives. It is a simple tool about six feet long and about as thick as the handle of a spade, with a curved metal hook on the end. In the hands of an experienced shunter, coupling or uncoupling was done quickly and easily – keeping the shunter at a safe distance from the buffers.

Breaking trains down and then reassembling them in the right order so that they could be despatched to all four corners of Britain was an art in itself and the shunter would ensure that this was done with the least number of movements. If it was not then bad tempers from the train crews driving the shunting locos would give the shunter short shrift. If you want to try it yourself there is a model layout in Steam for you to master.