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Bob Loynes
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Bob Loynes was an Apprentice in the Resident Civil Engineer’s Drawing Office at Melton Constable from April 1922 to March 1929.
His father John was a Riding Inspector at Melton from 1921 to 1926, then Running Shed Foreman until the Works closed in December 1936.

My father, John Thomas Loynes, was born in Holt on 21 October 1875. He started work as an Engine Cleaner at Melton Constable Running Shed 1889 – 92, about six years as a Fireman, being promoted to Driver in 1898, Riding Inspector in 1921 and Running Shed Foreman in 1926 ... He was very uneasy about striking against his employers and he objected very strongly at being told what he should do by people who had no experience of his own particular work. Striking conflicted with his employee loyalty and in 1926 there was no doubt at home what he would do. It was his general practice to go to work by the embankment steps at the side of the gas works, but at the start of the Strike he walked up the Main Road to work and continued to do so until it was over. It wasn’t at all easy; some of the repercussions to his family and himself were not of the happiest as there was some vilification and a little ostracism.
During the Strike he received a letter from the local Strike Committee urging him to “Be a man” and come out on strike, but they didn’t know my father. It only stiffened his resolve to be loyal to his employer. Incidentally, he knew the man who wrote the letter and his opinion of him, never very high, ebbed away never to return. He wasn’t at all impressed by another member of the Strike Committee whom he very strongly thought “ran with hares and hunted with hounds”. An appointment a year or so later proved that his evaluation of that particular person was well founded.
My father was extremely loyal to his employer, and his reasons were as honest and thankful as the days are long:
1. When he was 14, he was given the opportunity to earn a living by working for the E&MR, later the M&GNJR, and the work was permanent.
2. Shortly after he was married, he moved into a newly built company house.
3. He was offered the opportunity of joining the GNR Superannuation Fund and having contributed for over 20 years he received a pension of half pay, £2 10s. 0d., when he retired. Consequently, both my mother and father were able to enjoy a rather different way of life. His retirement lasted 16 years.
M&GN Circle

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