{"id":554,"date":"2017-05-23T19:20:07","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T18:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brandonheritage.org.uk\/?p=554"},"modified":"2017-05-23T19:20:07","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T18:20:07","slug":"554-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/?p=554","title":{"rendered":"Life with the railway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cherry Rogers’ memory reflects back on the railway …<\/h3>\n

For some reason the station was a favourite place to walk to.\u00a0 Mum and nana used to push me down there in my pram to see the trains and I in turn used to take my kids down to see the them.\u00a0 It was a nice walk and the pink flowering chestnut trees along the meadow opposite the Great Eastern were lovely, with horses kept in the field.\u00a0 They were lovely steam trains.\u00a0 You could sit on the platform to take the names and numbers, while watching all the parcels and livestock being loaded.\u00a0 There were cages with rabbits, chickens and ferrets.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t like the ferrets much, I thought they were smelly.\u00a0 People came off the train and often collected a bike, a parcel or a suitcase from the guards van.\u00a0 When the guard blew the whistle, what fun it was to rush to the footbridge and stand over the top of the train to get covered in smoke and little black smuts.\u00a0 Not so much fun when mum saw the smuts and I brushed them.\u00a0 We would watch people go to the bookstall and the train fill up with water.\u00a0 If stood in the right place, when the pipe swung back you could wash the smuts off, followed by a smack when you got home.\u00a0 It was expected and probably deserved so it didn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 Definitely wasn\u2019t bad enough to stop us doing it!<\/p>\n

I can remember there was a large turntable up by Redbrick Cottages<\/span>, with lots of busy sidings where they turned and loaded trains.\u00a0 There was a lot of activity with goods.\u00a0 Really long trains used to go through which were open goods trucks carrying iron, steel and timber.\u00a0 The covered trucks carried livestock, sheep and cows etc.\u00a0 The railway was used for most things.\u00a0 I remember the convoys of British and American troops which went through by road, but also large troop trains.\u00a0 Some soldiers were bound for the battle area and they all got off the train, formed ranks and marched away.\u00a0 Sometimes there were trucks waiting for them at the Mundford Road side in the station yard.<\/p>\n

When I went to work, Mr. Blanchflower<\/span> worked in the Booking Office and Nellie Lewis<\/span> was in the Goods Department.\u00a0 I used to have to do consignment notes for all the gates and timber leaving from Calders<\/span> sidings.\u00a0 And for the pheasants.\u00a0 It was thought that a brace of pheasants would be a good Christmas present for regular customers.\u00a0 Whether the recipients thought the same is another matter!\u00a0 I did labels to tie on the necks of the pheasants.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t tie them on, Geoff Southgate<\/span> did.\u00a0 He used to purse his lips up and say “bloody kids<\/em>“, but he still did it!\u00a0 I did the consignment notes and Harold Lockwood<\/span> put the pheasants in the van.\u00a0 Then we went over to the Goods Office to check them in.\u00a0 If there was an odd brace to go I was made to carry them over, but I wouldn\u2019t do it unless they were on a long bit of string so I didn\u2019t touch them.<\/p>\n

The very first porter I remember was Mr Bob Fowl.<\/span> He was a short white haired gentleman who lived in the station cottages on Mundford Road, near to the crossing gates.\u00a0 Mr. Brand,<\/span> the signalman, always called him ‘Bob Chicken’.\u00a0 Mr Fowl’s wife made things out of raffia covered milk bottle tops and he always carried a shopping bag made of them.\u00a0 She used to make Christmas chains out of old wall paper and give them to everyone.\u00a0 We were the proud owners of some.<\/p>\n

The signalman in the signal box, Stanley Brand<\/span>, was my fiend Ivy’s dad.\u00a0 We always called him Herbert.\u00a0 He used to heat a shepherd\u2019s pie, or cheese and potato pie, or something, for Ivy<\/span>, Beryl Philpot<\/span> and me.\u00a0 Our mums took it in turn to make something and we dropped it off at the signal box on the way to work.\u00a0 ‘Herbert’ would bring it over at lunchtime.\u00a0 You see he had an oven and we didn\u2019t, not until some years later.\u00a0 We only had a hotplate.<\/p>\n

Parcels were delivered and collected by lorry by a chubby man called Geoff who was based at Thetford.\u00a0 My great aunt Nell<\/span> worked in the refreshment room at Wymondham Station<\/span>, so I am told, and my aunt Crystal <\/span>worked in the Goods Office at Thetford for years.\u00a0 When I was about ten I used to go on the train on Saturdays to Thetford, to go in the Goods Office to see ‘Aunty Crys’.\u00a0 We would then go on to Norwich shopping.\u00a0 Her boss was a man called Sydney Raven<\/span>.\u00a0 She also worked with a man named Dougie, but I can\u2019t recall his surname.\u00a0 They always gave me a shilling to spend in Norwich.<\/p>\n

My Great Grandfather Walter Randall<\/span> was a signalman at Brandon for the Great Eastern Railway.\u00a0 He came from Tivetshall and lived on London Road.<\/p>\n

After I married I travelled to and from Thetford on the train every day to work.\u00a0 Things started to decline on the railway.\u00a0 The Booking Office and Goods Office were closed, first at Brandon and then Thetford.\u00a0 The bookstall disappeared at both stations.\u00a0 The waiting rooms closed at Thetford, but I was always allowed to sit in the Porter’s Room to wait.\u00a0 At the Brandon end, if the train was going to be late I sat in the signal box and waited.\u00a0\u00a0 The train driver would wait for me in the morning if I was late and the buffet car man poured me a coffee before they got to Thetford so that I could drink it before we got to Brandon.\u00a0 I used to sit with the postman and chat while I waited for my train home.\u00a0 All the post was sent on the train and would collect a bag of mail to send off.\u00a0 The mail always arrived on time.\u00a0 We had three deliveries a day at one time – early morning, mid-day and five o\u2019clock.\u00a0 When Norwich City had the cup run, 1959 I think, we decorated the office windows with green and yellow.\u00a0 When the trains full of fans stopped at the level crossing, we went out and shouted “Up the City!<\/em>”\u00a0 It\u2019s a shame it\u2019s all gone, because it was efficient and kept the traffic off the roads.<\/p>\n

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Walter Randall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Cherry Rogers’ memory reflects back on the railway … For some reason the station was a favourite place to walk to.\u00a0 Mum and nana used to push me down there in my pram to see the trains and I in turn used to take my kids down to see the them.\u00a0 It was a nice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[73,75,80,97,104,117,145,191,195,230,240,242,264,296,312],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memories","tag-blanchflower","tag-bob-chicken","tag-brand","tag-calders","tag-cherry-rogers","tag-crystal","tag-fowl","tag-lewis","tag-lockwood","tag-philpot","tag-raven","tag-redbrick-cottages","tag-southgate","tag-walter-randall","tag-wymondham-station","post_format-post-format-quote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}