Our April meeting proved to be just a little different from our usual gathering. We had nearly 30 extra folks join the Group for the evening, certainly doubling our usual attendance figure! The reason being that our own Associate Priest, Rev Malcolm, had agreed to speak to us about his ‘Life Working on the Railways,’ with a few little anecdotes thrown in. As well as bringing his own ‘fan club,’ the Men’s Group joined us with family members, and a good number of St John’s Church folk came along as well as other railway enthusiasts.
Word had spread and, he opened his talk by donning his railway cap and blowing his whistle to set the scene. As another move from the usual meeting, we needed to adjourn to the main church to cater for the added numbers, which was wonderful to see. His interest in trains was evident from an early age when he showed a photo of himself clutching a toy train. After leaving school he was offered an interview at Chesterfield Railway Station to start work as a Train Recorder at Barrow Hill, involving time keeping of the trains, learning to operate the signals and telephoning any problems through to others.
As expected from our experience of him at St John’s, he got on well with people. Later he was to be offered 3 further job
opportunities and, became a shunter working between 6 local collieries. It was ok when the weather was dry but pretty
abysmal when having to work in oilskins in wet conditions.
After 6 weeks’ training, Malcolm moved onto driving the trains, at 15mph, working from the freight depot at Barrow
Hill to various of the collieries including Avenue and the coke works, Wingerworth, Markham and Bolsover.
Barrow Hill closed in 1991 when the works were moved to a new depot in Worksop. In the early days, the trains were built in Romania but later most of the locos were built in France. So, we were given an overall picture of just how various
aspects of the local freight railways were run, considering also the Miner’s Strike in 1984/85 and, the later closing of the
collieries, and also of the Willington Power Station.
Rev Rhoda had prior knowledge that it was to be Malcolm’s birthday on the Friday, 2 days after our meeting, so all were
then invited to enjoy a piece of birthday cake brought in by her. The ladies helping with refreshments that particular
evening certainly had their work cut out for them with all the extra teas/coffees etc and, washing and drying up, so many thanks to Ev, Lesley and Kate – we realise they had drawn the short straw!
So ended an enjoyable evening, thank you Malcolm.
Our next Women’s Group meeting will take place on Wednesday, 7 May, when our guest speaker will be Emma
Richards of Age UK with a talk on ‘Prevention of Slips, Trips and Falls’, a topic close to a few of our hearts, I am thinking! If you wish to know more, please have a chat with Trish or myself. Our attendance fee has now been increased to £3 to
include tea/coffee and biscuits, the jump from £2 being to offset the increasing cost of speakers, and their travel
expenses. Hope to see you there.
Wendy Drake