The class 59s

[The Stationmaster]

20 hours ago, Steadfast said:

Absolutely brilliant, thank you for sharing that Chris. I love stories from the railway past like that, fantastic! 

 

Jo

I knew Ken very well, and on occasion visited his 'local' a few doors along from his home in his days working for Yeomans - but alas I never got to see his layout as we seemed to spend all our time in the pub.  His BR career had come to a rather unhappy end (he was Asst Divisional Manager at Bristol in his final BR job) where he had supported the efforts of David Butcher, the Area Manager at Westbury to try to capture stone traffic from the quarry (Torr Works) that John Yeoman was developing at Merehead.  David's idea was as much a result of his aim to save the traincrew depot at Westbury from closure as it was to develop new rail traffic and he succeeded in both - subsequently leaving BR and going to work for Yeoman as Rail Development Manager.

 

After he had left BR Ken was also offered a job by John Yeoman and John continued to support Ken through his continuing problem with his health which had led to his departure from BR.  Ken's son Richard also eventually joined him at Yeomans after serving for some years in the Army although he moved over to Germany when the Yeoman Class 59 venture was started over there.  It seemed to work out that when I came across Richard it could easily end up with me giving him a good b*ll*cking - starting from the time when he was a teenage volunteer at Cranmore.  The last time I saw him - effectively in many respects as successor to his father at Merehead - was during a Guards' dispute at Westbury c.1986 when it was being said that he was giving the Guards encouragement in their dispute (over one man operation of various stone trains).  I was covering the AM's job at Westbury so duly arranged to go and 'have a chat' with Richard taking a colleague along with me.  When we entered his office Richard shook hands and - to the astonishment of my colleague - said "Hello Mike, I presume you've come to give me another b*ll*cking?"   My colleague was even more astonished when I told Richard that was indeed the case and then protested that I shouldn't talk to an important customer like that.  To which Richard replied "I know why he's here, he always does that to me  and he's usually right when he does, and he is this time too."  So the next part of our conversation was nice and straightforward and we parted on very friendly terms.

 

In many respects he was a chip off the old block - very much so as far as enthusiasm for the railway was concerned - but I think he was at times a bit short of his father's diplomatic skills born of long experience in the railway industry.