RAILWAYMENS’ REMINISCENCES

The following articles on [this page and the next] were first published in 1989 and 1990 in the Oxfordshire Railway Society's Journal and are reproduced by kind permission of the authors and editor (Peter Heath). Both feature Radley men, the late Wally Turner, and Bill Grimes who still [in 1994] lives in the village ...

Wally Turner worked for British Railways for 18 years, joining in 1949 after a spell in the Royal Navy. He began his career at the Signal Training School in Reading in company with local author Harold Gassons, and from there was posted to Abingdon where he remained for about eighteen months before moving to Sandford for a short spell; in 1950 he was transferred to Radley where he stayed until 1967. Like most railwaymen of that era he had plenty of amusing tales to tell - even some of the more serious ones were tinged with humour.

Wally first became interested in railways at the age of five when, accompanied by his father who was employed by the G.W.R., he used to place detonators on the track in foggy weather. He remembered one incident in those far-off days when a certain individual was on 'detonator duty' at Sandford and spent the night in one of those old 'sentry box' line-side huts with a roaring brazier outside together with a pile of coal and a heap of detonators. The unfortunate man fell asleep and awoke to find his fire almost out. Grabbing what he thought to be a handful of coal, he threw it into the brazier. Several seconds later there was a firework display as the detonators exploded - luckily the chap was not badly injured, but he never went to sleep on duty after that!

Besides his father, Wally also had three brothers who worked on the railway doing such diverse jobs as Goods Guard, Fireman and Porter. Whilst Wally was at Abingdon not only was one of his brothers head shunter in the yard but there were also two uncles, who worked for Bernard Frost, a local coal merchant. When the private-owner wagons arrived the uncles used to shout out to their two 'nevvies' to position their trucks at the most convenient place for Frost's staithes, and from that time onwards the two brothers were known as the 'Nevvy Brothers' wherever they went.

Life in a signal box was never boring and with trains passing through Radley roughly every five minutes during the daytime there was always plenty to do. Being the junction for the Abingdon branch caused problems when the daily freight train from Hinksey Yard arrived about 7am and some of the movements involved encroaching on the main line, especially when there were more wagons than usual. The freight for Radley consisted mainly of coal and items for the local farms. The branch line tank engine would come up from Abingdon mid-morning to collect the wagons for the market town, sometimes having to make two or three journeys if the traffic warranted it. Signalmen were very proud of their boxes and because of the highly polished floors shoes had to be removed on entry and slippers substituted. On one occasion a young porter, who always wore brown boots, removed Wally's slippers and placed them on top of a telegraph pole, so he decided to get his own back! He waited for the porter to go into the toilets and followed him. The doors to the cubicles were all shut, so Wally bent down and looked under the first one and there, sure enough, were a pair of brown boots. Without hesitation he picked up a fire bucket full of water and threw the contents under the door, slipping silently back to the box to await developments. Imagine his surprise when a few moments later a six-foot Irish labourer came out of the toilet with sodden trousers and boots gushing with water! The Irishman didn't even glance up at the box and calmly clambered through the fence into the neighbouring caravan site where he lived. Maybe the fact that he was illegally using BR's toilet made him keep his mouth shut.

Other members of the public who helped to contribute - knowingly or otherwise - moments of humour or light relief included the local vicar, the Rev. Bruton, who during the 1960s would call at the station to collect his wife off the 6.05 pm from Paddington. He would shout up to the signal box and ask if the train was running to time. Wally would telephone up the line to maybe Slough or Ealing, and if the train was way behind schedule he would inform the vicar who would generally say "Do you fancy one?". Wally didn't refuse and the priest would nip through the hedge at the side of the goods loading bay and sneak into the "Bowyer Arms " by way of the pub's back garden. On his return, with two pint mugs filled with ale, he would be invited, against regulations, of course, into the box, when both men would be satisfied with the outcome!

Another such character was one of several in the village who bred homing pigeons. This particular chap used the railway for their inaugural flight, and it was arranged that they would be put on the first Sunday afternoon train to Didcot, where they would be released. On the day in question the birds were duly delivered but Lofty, the duty porter, forgot to put them on the train. The pigeon owner, whose house backed on to the line, shouted across to check they were on their way, only to be told the news. "Make sure you put them on the next one," he replied. The second train came and went, but the birds got overlooked again! "Have they gone this time?" came the shout from across the line, and Wally replied in the affirmative. "What are we going to do?" asked Lofty, to which Wally replied "You are going to push them down the side of the track on your bicycle under cover of those wagons and the embankment to where the Abingdon line branches off and release them!". Lofty spluttered but did as he was told. Not long afterwards the very excited voice of their owner exclaimed that the birds were back and must have broken the speed record on their flight from Didcot to Radley!!

Three of many incidents on the line stuck in Wally's memory. Firstly the driver of an early morning light-engine stopped at the signal box to report a mutilated body on the line by the bridge over the Thames at Nuneham. In normal circumstances all trains should be stopped in these cases but Wally knew that the next working was the newspaper train from London and thousands of people in Oxford wouldn't get their papers on time, so he let it through after phoning the police. They duly arrived and walked up the line, returning a little later with puzzled frowns.
They had not touched the body because it was on the middle of the bridge and the river was the county boundary, so they weren't sure if it was their body or Berkshire's! After some discussion the matter was eventually resolved, the body being taken on foot to Culham station where it was left in a sack under the signal box until a hearse came to collect it. There was also the crash at Appleford in September 1952. Wally was talking on the phone to Gordon Churchman, the duty signalman in the Appleford box, who told him that a light-engine was approaching his box on the down loop line from Didcot and that the next train for Wally to accept would be the Paddington to Worcester freight. Suddenly he shouted that the light engine was going too fast to stop. Wally heard a loud bang down the phone, then silence! He phoned Culham box, but not before managing to stop the York to Swindon passenger train which, if it had continued on its way, would have piled into the aftermath with possible catastrophic results. The Culham signalman could not raise Gordon either, so the stationmaster from there walked the line to Appleford to be met with two derailed locomotives, scores of smashed freight vans strewn across the mangled tracks and the signal box completely demolished, but no sign of Gordon. Eventually he was found lying in a field some distance from the lineside apparently none the worse for his ordeal, a very lucky man. It appears that the driver of the light engine thought he was on the down fast line and had misread the signals. When his loco ran out of track it ripped up the sleepers on the points which in turn damaged the adjoining line causing the following freight train to leave the rails, taking the signal box with it.

The third occasion was when the Hinksey signalman decided to send an iron-ore train from there to Didcot ahead of the Birkenhead-Paddington passenger train which normally left Oxford just after 3am, but was running about ten minutes late. After the freight passed Radley, Wally waited to accept the following train when suddenly the phone rang. It was the guard of the iron-ore train ringing from Didcot to say he had heard a terrific bang on the side of his van near Culham. The passenger train was fast approaching Radley as Wally spoke, so he threw the lever to put the signal at danger. The express, which was travelling about 70mph, made an emergency stop, slithering and screeching through the station. The restaurant car stopped right outside the signal box and Wally looked down to see cutlery and crockery allover the floor and several diners covered in soup! The Cockney driver walked to the box to ask what was going on. Wally told him and said that according to regulations one loco must be uncoupled (the express was double-headed) and travel light under caution to Culham in case there was some danger on the track, and then return to take the train forward if all was well. "To blazes with regulations, we want to get 'ome to bed!" he retorted. Wally eventually conceded, but was naturally very concerned about the safety of the passengers and there is no doubt he would have been dismissed if any harm had come to the train or its occupants. As events turned out nothing was amiss and the mystery of the bang was never solved.

The above recollections are but just a few of many instances which occurred during Wally's seventeen happy years at Radley. In 1967 the signal box closed - Wally was offered a transfer to Worcester but decided, sadly, to leave the railway and work in the car factory at Cowley like so many of his colleagues. Even there he could not get away from trains, as when his new employers discovered he was a railwayman they offered him the job of driving the factory's diesel shunter even though he had never driven one before! Following a car accident three years later Wally returned to work after a lengthy absence to find that the Company had decided to do away with the loco.