Back then working on the railways was a life style choice and not just a job and we found out a lot more about the types of work people had to do and the conditions they worked under than we knew before. The Great Western Railway was the beginning of the National Health Service - workers paid 8 pence a week for free health care, dental treatment and lots of other necessities chucked in as well including some housing. If you were unlucky enough to get a hand or foot cut off by the machinery you could get a wooden replacement and some rehabilitation before heading back to the machinery. And for all that for you and your family, you had to work a 12 hour day for 6 days with a shorter day on Sunday, had a lunch break and were allowed to clock in for a daily 10 minute trip to the loo any time you liked. "Once a railwayman always a railwayman - working on the railway was more than just a job it was a way of life" (my cynical side thinks it would be hard to get out of it with the perks once you were in it). We wandered through rooms where administrators (pay clerks, bosses etc), storeman (if you needed a new broom you had to return the handle to ensure it wasn't stolen), welders, wood turners, pattern makers etc all worked - all those that were needed to build a new train just like the Caerphilly Castle (which sat proudly in one of the old workshops - originally designed by Charles Collett and noted for its excellent perforamnce as these trains could cover 77.25 miles from Swindon to Paddington at an average speed of 81.68 mph start to stop - a world record for a steam train at the time).
We wandered into the room where the railway was operated from - the signal room - where I got a certificate that said I had 'successfully operated the signal levers in Uffington Signal Box at STEAM and qualifed as a GWR Signal Man' (I would like to think they could tell I was a woman but ...). Anyway for this honour I had to put a local train into a siding and tell the driver to stop, let the Royal train go through at high speed and then reopen the siding for the local train to pass by. All this successfully done without any chips to the paintwork or derailments.
Brunel (that clever guy who built the suspension bridge in Clifton) called the drivers a "species of machine who had to be able to respond to the sounds and the feel of the engine". He thought a firemen was "a human shovel keeping tons of coal burning in the firebox". I hope that our current employers don't think of us like that!! The driver and the firemen could spend many nights away from home. They were known as 'double homers' having two places where they rested their weary heads. Plus they were on call all the time - no EU working time directive that says you have to have a rest for them. Then there was the guard who had a list of duties that sort of differed depending on whether they were a guard on a passenger or goods train. But they did have some common responsibilities like keeping a full record of every journey, carrying instructions, time table, rule books, watch, whistle, flags, lamps and detonators. Then there were the Navvies who did all the hard work building the railway. They lived in shanty towns along the way and were often paid in tickets which could be exchanged for goods at the 'truck' - a caravan owned by the contractor - sort of like a mobile dairy. I felt sorry for these guys - as I got the impression it would be hard to save to get themselves out of this lifestyle if they wanted to and would end up with nothing more than when they started with the job. It is estimated that in 1851 the Navvies spent the equivalent of £1000 on beer for every mile of railway built - the contractors who owned the mobile dairy/pub must have been rubbing their hands in glee. There were the same stories we've heard before of women working during the war, not wanting to give up the job when the men returned and the employer wanting to keep them on as they often did a better job. And another story about the inventor of the modern ticket. We have Thomas Edmondson a station master, to thank for this useful tool of exchanging a service for our money. While having time to think as he ran the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway he devised the idea of a new type of railway ticket: a small piece of cardboard, pre-printed with journey details rather than a hand written piece of paper with the details. The tickets were numbered and when purchased had a date stamped across them. He made his fortune by developing a machine to print the tickets with serial numbers - patented it - and then charged a royalty to railway companies which in those days was lots of money - ten shillings per year per mile of the railway track owned by the company. And last but not least we admired the railway cups and tea cakes that looked very similar to those sold at many a NZ station - the steam train puffed its way through the countryside - stopping at lots of little stations along the way - poured the passengers train - out flowed the tea from the tea pot and back onto the train. There's the story of the caterers at Swindon Refreshment Room - a fairly typical story about how the Great Western Railway train stopped for 10 minutes at Swindon, with such a short stop the passengers hopped off, bought a cuppa and cake and hopped back on. The food was so bad, and probably the tea and coffee so stewed that the place became known as Swindleum - but look at the coffee pot - how could you complain with your coffee coming out of that! And if you hadn't made the railway part of your life you could make it part of your holiday - with routes built by the Navvies all the way from London to the Cornish Riveria - escape the smog to Cornwall where 'The Ozone laden breezes come straight from the broad atlantic'. Couldn't resist this last little bit...To finish off this little tale here are the 1894 words to the song we know so well...
I been wukkin' on de railroad
All de livelong day,
I been wukkin' on de railroad
Ter pass de time away.
Doan' yuh hyah de whistle blowin'?
Ris up, so uhly in de mawn;
Doan' yuh hyah de cap'n shouin',
"Dinah, blow yo' hawn?" ...
And then onto Lechlade on Thames where we were going for a walk over 7 stiles and along the Thames - but forgetting ones coat on a February Saturday afternoon is not a good idea so we gave that one away for another day and headed back to Bristol. Oops - distraction came in the form of a brown road sign that said 'Canal tunnel inn'. I said "That means there must be a canal tunnel" and Harry secretly thought "That means there must be a inn where we can sit and watch Wales play Scotland" and we were both right. After a quick wander down to the disused tunnel and canal we settled ourselves down with a number of Welsh supporters (including a very vocal dog that got excited every time Wales did something worth watching which was not often in the first half).
On Saturday night we went out for dinner with Tessa and Colin - we started off at a place which prompted us to ask more than once "Why didn't we bring our cameras?" They took us to the old Lido swimming pool now converted to an upmarket swimming pool, sauna, spa and restaurant - but more about that in a later blog cos in a couple of weeks we are going back for a meal (you get a free swim, sauna and spa chucked in) and next time we will take our camera. We then wandered around some parts of Clifton we hadn't been too before (Tessa grew up round here) and filled up on Italian before heading back to bed in preparation for Sunday.Spring is just around the corner - there are snowdrops in the spring and the daffies are just beginning to flower. We saw all this on our big day out on Sunday. It was our first 'official' ramble (we had a choice of that or going to hear the Society of Recorder Players!). With about 40 others we wandered 9 miles around the Cotswolds, chatting to lots of the other ramblers as we rambled through muddy paths, up and down slopes, across grassland, over stiles, to the nearest pub for a drink and rest.
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