How many times was it found that railwaymen's stories were a bit unbelievable/exaggerated or outright madeup?

[The Stationmaster]

9 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

I thought that tale was going to take a different turn!

I was hopeful too ...

 

17 minutes ago, PaulRhB said:

There are quite a few tall tales but also some corkers of true ones. I know of a Tramm crew who arrived back with a cherry tree on board. 
 

The words of Alice Cooper in an interview come to mind, “ about 40% of the stories about me are true. Everything you’ve heard about Keith Moon is true, and you’ve only heard a tenth of it”

That accurately describes some characters I’ve worked with. 
 

 

At one place where I worked it was quite common in early - mid December to see an EE Type 3 returning off one particular trip working to have the back cab stuffed full of small fir trees.  Odd to relate but by the time the loco got back to the stabling sidings from putting off its train in the Down Yard that cab showed signs of having been recently swept out.

[PaulRhB]

A friend of mine started his career on steam and as a fireman worked the line through Brickett Wood. He had worked the train alone on some trips while his driver visited a lady friend at the terminal station. Once his mate returned to the station to find the area inspector waiting to see them so had to hide in the yard and got on the opposite side as the inspector walked up to the loco! 
Same guy also has to remove a tree branch from the fuel tank of a Virgin HST after hitting it at speed. Alf sadly no longer with us but while he could spin some great stories of the other antics around them the stories were true. 

[Michael Hodgson]

The traditional English public house (and Scottish, Irish and Welsh too) has always had the odd old boy in the corner that people would buy a pint because they told amusing stories about what happened in the good old days.  Does it matter whether these stories were true as long as they were entertaining?

 

How long this will continue as more and more pubs have to shut up shop because it's cheaper to buy your beer at Tesco's?  However here in Hitchin which boasts over 50 lost pubs,  you can still get your beer on the site of the Talisman (formerly the Railway Inn) because it now is Tesco's!

[Wickham Green too]

Hmmmm .............. can't seem to find Tesco's listed in the Good Beer Guide ! 🥴

[Enterprisingwestern]

19 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

I thought that tale was going to take a different turn!

 

But then he'd be on the wrong road to the signal box?

 

Mike.

[The Stationmaster]

Incidents involving members of staff and their 'lady friends' were so common I doubt there was much need to invent them.  similarly when male and females get together at work the results can be little different from them meeting elsewhere and if the flesh is willing and the spirit is weak the inevitable can result - sometimes in seemingly unusual places.

 

Occasionally you would come across a Signalman who used his place of work on late or night turns for such assignations.  We had one on one patch where I worked and my boss and I spent considerable time trying to catch him but on occasions when we were fairly sure that she was there she had inevitably vanished by the time we had walked up the noisy path to get to the ;box.  She was most likely hidden by then in the locking room with the door locked from the inside and the Signalman's explanation for being at work wearing only his underpants was always put down to 'hot weather.   Another place where that happened was at Radley where various Inspectors tried hard to catch the culprit but always failed until one evening an inspector on a train to Oxford happened to glance at the signal box at just the right moment, got off the train as it started to move and duly caught the pair wearing very little clothing. (And if you know where Radley signal box was - on the Up platform-  you'd wonder how the bloke had got away with it for so long but would understand how diffi.cult it was to catch him).

 

A number of people on here know where I worked during my final years on 'the big railway' and by repute there was a 'one mile down club' the membership of which was various male and female traincrew members.  i don't know if it was true but I wouldn't be in the least surprised if it was.

 

However the best story of the lot which I have ever heard - and which had something of a ring of truth although there might have been exaggeration in one respect (wait and see) was told by an Inspector I knew back in the early 1970s.   He decided to visit a location where a mate of his was the Stationmaster; the station involved had the reputation for being the place from which the radio and tv show 'Davy Jones Locker' had drawn inspiration and was somewhat off the well trodden track taken by most Inspectors.   Anyway our Inspector duly arrived at the station around the middle of the day and found it seemingly deserted - there was nobody on the platform, no one in the Porters' Room or the Parcles office and he could get no response at the Booking oFFice window.  So he decided to try the Stationmaster's office and duly knocked on the door and walked in - the door not being locked.  There he found the Stationmaster, how shall I put it? - atop the lady booking clerk who was lying on the Stationmaster's desk with the pair of them, hmm, very closely engaged in a well known human activity.  So far 100% believable so I didn't doubt any of the story up to then.  However I did take with a pinch of salt his closing words of the tale which were 'And do you know, he still had his Stationmaster's hat on!'

[MarkC]

48 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

'And do you know, he still had his Stationmaster's hat on!'

A Tom Jones fan, perchance? 😜

[Lacathedrale]

One thing that always struck me as a little odd was Curly Lawrence talking about an LBSCR Single hauling a long, heavy train up and over the BML only to pull into London Bridge with the smokebox 'glowing hot' ! 

[Happy Hippo]

13 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

I was hopeful too ...

 

A request for a banker?

[caradoc]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

Incidents involving members of staff and their 'lady friends' were so common I doubt there was much need to invent them

 

When there were still signalboxes on the Gourock line an Inspector and his assistant paid a late visit to one, only to find the Signalman in a compromising position with a lady friend. Far from being embarrassed or contrite, the Signalman asked them to wait outside until the event was concluded.... So they did!

 

 

[Steamport Southport]

14 minutes ago, Lacathedrale said:

One thing that always struck me as a little odd was Curly Lawrence talking about an LBSCR Single hauling a long, heavy train up and over the BML only to pull into London Bridge with the smokebox 'glowing hot' ! 

 

Ash build up in the smokebox causing overheating. Seems to have been a problem with a lot of Scottish* locomotives for some strange reason. Look at photos of CR and NBR locomotives such as this Pickersgill 4-4-0.

 

https://mikemorant.smugmug.com/Trains-Railways-British-Isles/Scottish-and-BRSc/Scotland-Caledonian/i-BbTCMkS/A

 

One of the reasons a lot of them got extended smokeboxes such as the T9s.

 

*Built or designed by Scots such as Drummond so also applied to ones south of the border as well. I would say that Stroudley was one who used a lot of Scottish ideas in his designs so they were also probably affected.

 

 

Jason

[Enterprisingwestern]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

'And do you know, he still had his Stationmaster's hat on!'

 

One has to maintains ones superior rank dontcha know?!

 

Mike.

[DaveSmith]

23 hours ago, darrel said:

Some of the things I've seen in my time in the railway you simply wouldn't belive. 

But yes you do get the odd fantasist. We had one guard who told the story of how he and his brother had been flying to Cape Canaverel to fix the space shuttle because they had designed it 🙄. On the way there they were talking to the pilot, the pilot asked him where he worked, he told the pilot what depot it was. The pilot replied "oh yes I know it well when we see that depot we turn left for Glasgow Airport!" 🤔🙄

Same guard was according to himself, in a band with Eric Clapton, had a vidio recorder that could be set with a remote control from 20 miles away and had a gas power television. How this lunatic ever got a job in the railway is beyond me.

There's a regular in the local pubs here in Oxfordshire who tells very similar tales - his brother either built/designed/piloted the space shuttle (depending on which version of the story he wants to tell), and his son was chosen by Eric Clapton to be his student.

Known to most people round here as someone not to get talking to. His son once introduced himself as 'son of Bullshot Bob'!

[Michael Hodgson]

3 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

However I did take with a pinch of salt his closing words of the tale which were 'And do you know, he still had his Stationmaster's hat on!'

 

It would have been more credible with she still had his Stationmaster's hat on!'

[rogerzilla]

I went to 6th form with an individual who told everyone that he had directed Raiders Of The Lost Ark.   He even believed it himself. He was 17 and it was 1988.  His name began Steven Sp- but it was most certainly not Spielberg.

[Wickham Green too]

..... and of course we've all come across someone whose grandfather was driver of the Flying Scot - probably when it did 126mph, to boot !

[The Stationmaster]

18 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

..... and of course we've all come across someone whose grandfather was driver of the Flying Scot - probably when it did 126mph, to boot !

The Western variant was slightly different in that at one time in (New) Swindon it seemed that every male person in the town had either built 'King George V' or had driven it.

 

Rather different from those who had really been involved in what many of us regard as momentous events in railway history - years agi I met and had a long chat with 'Billy' Wells who drove the GWR 28XX in the 1948 loco exchanges and who achieved excellent results (for the Western).  Who said he just drove it in his normal way and had been given no special instructions before he left Old Oak Common apart from being told it was fully 'understood' that he would do his best.  Lovely chap with a great reputation as a very good engineman, particularly among those who had fired for him over the years (several of whom I knew as Drivers),  but to him it was just a slightly different part of the job.

[pH]

3 hours ago, caradoc said:

 

When there were still signalboxes on the Gourock line an Inspector and his assistant paid a late visit to one, only to find the Signalman in a compromising position with a lady friend. Far from being embarrassed or contrite, the Signalman asked them to wait outside until the event was concluded.... So they did!

 

 

A signalman on that line had also to perform station duties for a while one evening as the sole porter on duty was ‘otherwise engaged’.

[The Johnster]

17 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Everything you’ve heard about Keith Moon is true, and you’ve only heard a tenth of it”

 

I recall Ted Best interviewing Roger Daltrey on R1 back in the 70s, with the following exchange:-

 

TB 'Tell us, Roger, is Kieth really as mad as they say he is'?

RD 'Course not, it's all exaggeration, good publicity, you know, Kieth's a lovely bloke, pussycat, wouldn't harm a fly'.

TB 'What is he like, then, when he comes around to your house to visit'?

RD 'My house?  MY House!!!  I don't let that lunatic anywhere near my house'!

 

5 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

 So far 100% believable so I didn't doubt any of the story up to then.  However I did take with a pinch of salt his closing words of the tale which were 'And do you know, he still had his Stationmaster's hat on!'

 

We will draw a discreet veil, then, over your hero's encounter on the mail bags in the van of a 120 on the 23.00 Bristol TM-Cardiff Central with a willing young lady, which I cannot possibly confirm may or may not have involved him giving the right away at Severn Tunnel Jc wearing nothing but his guard's hat.  Dusty sex, love it, don't cough or you'll prematurely...

 

 

4 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

A request for a banker?

 

Coupled?  In rear?  As authorised in the relevant Sectional Appendix?

 

3 hours ago, DaveSmith said:

There's a regular in the local pubs here in Oxfordshire who tells very similar tales - his brother either built/designed/piloted the space shuttle (depending on which version of the story he wants to tell), and his son was chosen by Eric Clapton to be his student.

Known to most people round here as someone not to get talking to. His son once introduced himself as 'son of Bullshot Bob'!

 

We have a local example, quite a youngish chap which seems not to be what is expected for some reason, insists that he is an advisor to Bill Gates, and will occasionally pull his phone out of his pocket (it hasn't rung and there's no light on it) and say 'ah, that's Bill now, excuse me a minute' and goes outside to take the call.  He also occasionally advises Elon Musk, and claims that the Hyperloop is his idea.

 

1 hour ago, Wickham Green too said:

..... and of course we've all come across someone whose grandfather was driver of the Flying Scot - probably when it did 126mph, to boot !

 

Old chap I once met in a Vale of Glamorgan pub claimed to have fired on Lord of the Isles when it was a Broad Gauge engine when it did 140mph at the bottom of the Severn Tunnel.  I can sort of see where this came from, as a confusion/coflabulation of several vague matters that surfaced occasionally.  There was a broad gauge LotI, a tale of a Castle being clocked at 100mph in the Severn Tunnel which got mixed in with that of the Castle that (understandably) made a spectacularly rapid exit from High Street with an up express during the Swansea Blitz, and the semi-mythical semi-factual Edwardian exploit of Lady of Lyons on the Badminton Cut-off, which according to the signalbox passing times (which should have been accurate) managed 140mph light engine between Hullavington and Little Somerford, but was hushed up by those involved, many of whom should have known better...

 

On another occasion in the early 70s, I was introduced to a nonegerian in the Staff Club at Severn Tunnel Jc who had fired on a Broad Gauge 'Corsair' saddle tank at Bristol TM goods as a passed cleaner in the very early 1890s, and as this is quite feasible, I believe it.  It felt a bit like buying a beer for a Trilobite, though, living history!

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

We will draw a discreet veil, then, over your hero's encounter on the mail bags in the van of a 120 on the 23.00 Bristol TM-Cardiff Central with a willing young lady, which I cannot possibly confirm may or may not have involved him giving the right away at Severn Tunnel Jc wearing nothing but his guard's hat.  Dusty sex, love it, don't cough or you'll prematurely...

 

When I lived in the area there was never anybody about at STJ at that time of night!

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

On another occasion in the early 70s, I was introduced to a nonegerian in the Staff Club at Severn Tunnel Jc who had fired on a Broad Gauge 'Corsair' saddle tank at Bristol TM goods as a passed cleaner in the very early 1890s, and as this is quite feasible, I believe it.

Is he still there ?  😵

[The Johnster]

16 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

When I lived in the area there was never anybody about at STJ at that time of night!

 

The 23.00 off Bristol was the last train of the evening IIRC, in that direction anyway, and was much used by STJ traincrew returning from up-line.  It was certainly a bleak old hole in the winter, with an easterly blowing in off the river.  In later years I used to feel sorry for the poor guy  operating the motorway bridge tollgate on his own in the small wee hours, the rain battering on his cabin windows and a lorry about every hour or so.  I stopped and chatted to one for about forty minutes one night before headlights appeared coming off the SSC in my mirror and I bid him good morning.  Lonely old job, cold as well as you'd see them all wrapped up and huddled over a calor gas heater!

 

16 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Is he still there ?  😵

 

If he is it'll be in Rogiet churchyard.  ISTR the occasion was his 98th or 99th birthday, and I later heard that he made the magic ton; this would have been 1971 or maybe 72.  The Staff Club had a backwards clock, running backwards with numbers to suit, which used to cause all sorts of confusion for traincrew who had to be back on the premises by certain times.  There was a pub as well, 'The Rogiet', which featured a foul-mouthed and very talkative mynah bird, who would become incandescent with rage and launch into a tirade of obscenities at the sight of a railway uniform.  I went to a wedding reception there many years later, early 90s IIRC, and the old bird was still going strong, but had quietened down a bit, presumably after railwaymen became less of a commonality.

 

There was also 'The Moors', originally a railway hostel during the war when staff were transferred to STJ, a very busy war hub, which had an appalling reputation for lice-ridden bedding and poor food.  It looked the part, a bleak, single storey red-brick wartime austerity structure, used in my day as a ladies bail hostel/halfway house for ex-prisoners by the Home Office, and from the look of things I didn't envy them!  I believe it was used for asylum seekers as well at one time but is now closed and demolished, and not missed!

 

Back in my spotting days, we used to cycle to STJ from Cardiff, across the levels, visiting Cashmore's and Buttygeig's scrapyards on the way, and using the Newport Transporter Bridge, usually deciding that it was too windy or getting dark to cycle home and coming back on the train (I think it saved us about sixpence on the cost of a return fare).  There was a buffet on the island platform, a very welcome shelter when those northeasterlies blew in (we'd ride home on those days, achieving suicidal speeds on the levels), and I always wondered what happened to the large framed Cunard poster for the Mauretania that adorned the end wall.  The buffer ladies were very proud of it, and I hope someone rescued it, it was a lovely thing and had been there years!

[kevinlms]

7 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

..... and of course we've all come across someone whose grandfather was driver of the Flying Scot - probably when it did 126mph, to boot !

Flying Scot at 126mph, how many would fall for that?

[Michael Hodgson]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

In later years I used to feel sorry for the poor guy  operating the motorway bridge tollgate on his own in the small wee hours, the rain battering on his cabin windows and a lorry about every hour or so.  I stopped and chatted to one for about forty minutes one night before headlights appeared coming off the SSC in my mirror and I bid him good morning.  Lonely old job, cold as well as you'd see them all wrapped up and huddled over a calor gas heater!

The skipper of the Aust Ferry took that job when the bridge first opened and the ferry closed. 

I believe he later became Mayor of Monmouth.

[The Johnster]

I remember reading that somewhere, but the job the ferry skipper took on was on the old M4 Severn Bridge, now the M48 bridge, and not the newer, current, M4 bridge, the 'Prince of Wales Bridge' or Second Severn Crossing.  The old bridge had the tolls on the English side so he had to walk across from Bulwark on the footpath if his car wouldn't start, which must have been fun in rough weather...

 

The Aust ferries were used as workboats during the demolition of the Severn Railway Bridge. which had collapsed after two tanker barges collided off Sharpness in thick fog and were taken up by the tide to strike one of the piers in 1960, with the loss of five crewmen.  The burned out remains of the barges, the Arkendale H, carrying 300 tons of bunker fuel, and the Wastdale H, with 350 tons of petroleum, can still be seen from the train between Purton and Gatcombe, and from the towpath of the Gloucester Ship Canal just north of Sharpness.  The railway bridge was used by the Lydney-Sharpness auto service, which was operated jointly by the LMS and the GW, the GW having to provide composite compartment trailers for LMS ticketing purposes, the only autotrailers with first class accommodation.  The heaviest locomotives allowed over it were Dean Goods and 2251 0-6-0s, which worked the Cardiff-Bristol trains when the Severn Tunnel was closed for maintenance, usually on a Sunday, and my father was a passenger on the last of these workings the Sunday before the bridge was destroyed.  The remains of the railway bridge were left in situ until the opening of the first M4 Severn road bridge in 1969, when the ferries became available as workboats, which provided a short respite from unemployment for their crews.