" I'm goin' a tell you a stoorrrry"
I was born in 1945 in the Higher Openshaw area of Manchester. In Bowness Street to be exact, behind the Gransmoor Hotel, Which is on Ashton Old Road.
I can remember from a very early age, probably four or five years old that I had an interest in trains.
My Father worked on the railways at Gorton Tank and later on in his life for British Waterways at their canal and boat maintenance depot at Gorton, which, was part of the Gorton Tank complex. As a result of this he was entitled to cheap travel on the railways, so everywhere we went was by train. Whenever we went away for any distance the best part to me was the travelling and the trains we travelled on.
I really became aware of locomotives when, on our return to Manchester Central Station after a day out to New Brighton with the family my Father pointed to a locomotive that was stood just outside the station approaches and he told me that it had a name and pointed to the nameplate, which was 'PRINCE of WALES'. I knew then that I had an interest.
We lived about a five to ten minute walk from the ex GC main line between Gorton and Fairfield stations and, when a little older my fellow trainspotter mates and I would go down to the railway and collect numbers at the nearest vantage point which was behind Neston Street. The railway here was four tracked and down a cutting so the view of the line was very good. We started to go to Fairfield and Gorton Stations, and we started to venture further afield and went to the 'Birdcage' Which was an aerial walk way which traversed the whole of Gorton works, litterally splitting it into two. The birdcage went over the the area where the erecting shop joined onto the machine shop, Then it went over the GC mainline into (appropiately named) Railway Street, where, the main offices of 'Beyer Peacock's' were situated. At the Northern end of the birdcage there were wide open views of the running sheds and the works yard. When we started to venture further we visited The main Manchester terminii and yet further afield again to Crewe, York, Doncaster, Newcastle and London etc as we got older.
A large number of people in those days still travelled by train and in the post war days of the early '50s the railways were still magic, and not just to us kids. How many of you remember going on a train journey, and, at the end of that journey, how many of you remember your elders stopping and looking at the loco with admiration. The driver and fireman no doubt leaning out of the cab window or over the footplate door, maybe ready for a chat. Yes the railways were still great and the train driver ruled and every kid wanted to be one.
In those days nearly every lad in the land must have owned an Ian Allen ABC train book. I owned about five combined volumes over approximately a seven year time span. At 10/- each (mid 50s) they were mighty expensive and took months to save up for especially when I received about two bob 'spends' per week which, after buying the 'Eagle' and a few sherbert dips and a Saturday morning at the Odeon cinema at Guide Bridge to watch the matinees there wasn't much change left to save.
I left School when I was 15 and started at Gorton Tank on May 2 1960 as an apprentice fitter and Turner in the machine shop,working under the guidance of Mr.Len Fanning, one of the two machine tool setters allocated to setting up the capstan lathes for the first year apprentices to turn out nuts, bolts, rivets and the like by their thousands to quench the thirst of the fitting bays, boiler shop and erecting shops.
When Gorton closed I went to Crewe locomotive works to complete my 'time'. When I came out of my time I could have stayed on at Crewe but I managed to get a transfer to Reddish Traction depot in Manchester, where I stayed until 1973. In 1973 I left the railways and worked for Mirrlees Blackstone of Stockport on their service department and thus my railway days were over. At this time I had lost interest in the railways (so I thought) and being on service at Mirrlees I started to travel extensively both in the UK and overseas. I got married in Mauritius whilst with Mirrlees. After getting married I tried a more settled life and rejoined the railways in 1979 (back at Reddish), but, my travelling days at Mirrlees gave me itchy feet and I only stayed on the railway for 12 months and then we emigrated to Australia, where, I worked for an associate company to Mirrlees and, again we started travelling around again in Australia and the Pacific area. When our two children started to grow a little it became obvious that our travelling days had to come to an end and, so we opted to settle in the beautifull city of Perth in Wetern Australia.
For anybody who has ever visited Perth or knows a little about it, it is known that there is a very large population of people of UK origin who lives there, better known as 'Poms'. To cater for the Poms, the newsagents sell UK magazines, and yes, amongst those magazines are UK railway magazines. After I bought a couple of magazines (for curiosity ) I was hooked again. So here I am after all those rhose years taking a bigger interest in the railways than I have ever done before.
When I think back to being a young lad, we used to play in the small open areas in Fairfield called Fairfield Wells. I wonder how many hundreds of times we walked passed the Great John G. Robinson's houses that he lived in at the turn of the last century, (in the then prestigous area of Fairfield). It is only recently that this was realised.
"IF" IS A FUNNY WORD, IF ONLY............
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Thanks Alan Strickland, for the photograph