As a youngster, steam locomotives called me as nature impels the swallows to fly southward when summer fades into autumn. Railways were in my blood through three generations, so it was probably inevitable that I should become a railwayman.
My father, who had served an apprenticeship at the Melton Constable works of the M&GNJR, fought with the Royal Engineers in Northern France from 1916 to 1918; returning to Melton from the holocaust of the Western Front he was offered quite inadequate remuneration. Deciding, therefore, that he would fare better in private industry, he migrated to that Mecca of the Great Northern and thriving town of post-war development - Doncaster. And so it was that I was born into the uncertain world of 1920.
One of my great-grandfathers had helped to build a line which became part of the M&GNJR. My paternal grandfather had served most of his career on that line as a signalman, mainly at Melton - a railway crossroads in the middle of Norfolk. It was an ideal centre for holidays, and as a schoolboy I spent several of my summer holidays there. Arriving there by train, my parents and I would be met by my grandfather driving a splendid pony and trap. Another of those charming conveyances was usually waiting at the station as a taxi service.
As a small boy I used to spend many hours with my grandfather in the West Junction box at Melton, and marvelled at his manipulation of the row of levers, with their polished steel hand-grips, the lever-shanks being painted in different colours to indicate their various functions. There was quite an array of instruments and telegraphs, and attached to the instrument shelf was a permanent reminder in the form of a Midland cast-iron plate which warned; STOP AND THINK.
The whole of that signal box was always in an immaculate state of housekeeping. Grandad was a big man, with muscles like a blacksmith through years of pulling heavy point-levers. He had spent his younger days with horses - the only means of traction on the roads of those times. I remember him striding home from work on dark evenings, using an oil-burning signal lamp to light his way along the pitch black country roads.
M&GN Circle