The Yeovil Engineman

The Yeovil Engineman

By Robin Whitlock

If you visit the town of Yeovil in Somerset and wander idly down the main shopping street you'll see a road on your right called 'Southwestern Terrace' leading to the town's multiplex cinema and leisure park. This was once the approach road to Yeovil Town railway station, originally built in 1861 by the London & South Western Railway (LSWR).
The cinema and ten-pin bowling alley are naturally very popular. In the days of my youth the site was a massive car park serving two of the main supermarkets. This suited me fine because it was like a blank canvas upon which I could mentally picture the spectacle of a large country station, which, in its day, was normally very busy, not least because of its attendant engine shed.
Derek Phillips, who still lives in Yeovil, remembers the shed very well since he was employed as an engine cleaner there, later progressing to fireman.
"Well there were adverts in the Western Gazette with a number to phone the shed" he recalls. "I left school in 1956 and my mother said there was an advert for engine cleaners and so I called them and got an interview."
After passing a basic exam, he travelled to Eastleigh in Hants for a medical. Soon after, he found himself cleaning steam locomotives, a very dirty job indeed.
"The junior cleaners always got the muckiest jobs" he tells me "and I had to start underneath, scraping the springs with a mixture of oil and paraffin".
Unlike the sheds on preserved railways today, working at an engine depot was an incredibly filthy and potentially hazardous occupation.
"I used to go home plastered in oil. There was no health and safety in our day, old fire irons all over the place, old lamps and heaps of clinker. There were usually thirty to forty engines on the pit which were full of water, ash and clinker."
One of the worst jobs when cleaning an engine was getting inside the smokebox to clean the boiler tubes.
"Cleaning the smokebox was a hard job, with a long tube and the smokebox char would fall out on you. The fireboxes, you had to go in feet first. There was a chap there that used to rebuild the brick arches. It was a terrible job, he had to bang out the firebars and then demolish the brick arch."
The normal route for an engineman was to start as a cleaner and then progress to fireman. Derek had to go to Exeter shed for a two week course, where he met other cleaners from the main sheds in Devon and Cornwall.
"They used to tell you there was a college in Exeter, and it turned out to be an old LSWR [London and South Western Railway] carriage body on props. The following week I was at Exmouth Junction and was shown how to square up, raking out the ashpan, getting the clinker out of the smokebox, coaling and watering. Sam Smith was the Senior Inspector, he used to wear a hornberg hat, and he would pass us out as firemen. I used to go out as the third man [alongside the driver and fireman] to Exmouth Junction and then taxi back on an engine. Back at Yeovil Town I would have to name every part of the engine."
From Yeovil Town and as a newly qualified fireman, Derek used to travel as far Salisbury and Exeter on the Southern main line and up to Westbury on the Western Region line. There was always a bit of a rivalry between regions, an attitude passed over from the days of the Southern Railway and Great Western Railway prior to nationalisation.
"Oh yes. A lot of the western men wouldn't speak to southern men and they wouldn't coal us at Westbury, we were told to sod off because we was on a 'foreign' engine."
Those were golden days for Derek, full of wonderful memories.
"Everybody knew each other and looked after each other. There was a football team and a skittles team and the railway social club at Pen Mill was always popular."
Sadly though, it wasn't to last. In the final days of steam engines were often neglected and run down. Most steam locomotives in the south west had gone by 1964.
"Engines were getting pretty ropey, especially when the western took control. I wasn't very happy with the atmosphere and I was glad to finish in the end. For us it just went downhill and lots of the blokes moved away. '64 was probably one of the worst years of my life."
Today Yeovil Town station is just a memory, and the sound of accelerating cars and chatty, excitable cinema goers fills the air where once could be heard the vibrant roar and hiss of steam locomotives. Yet all is not completely lost, for railway preservation in the UK is a thriving and vibrant part of the country's tourist industry, as well as an exciting experience for all those who yearn to relive the golden years of steam.
© This work is the property of Robin Whitlock and may not be published or copied without the authors permission.

This article was originally published in the April 2010 edition of the online magazine "Over-65.com"

I am a freelance writer, researcher and administrator with an interest in many contemporary issues across a wide variety of genre’s and business sectors. I have a particular interest in energy and the environment which is the main theme of my blog. I have been published in a wide variety of magazines since I started writing in 1997 and I also write regularly for the social media forum of a technical recruitment consultancy based in Milton Keynes. More recently I have started writing articles for the website of a business software company and also work as an online data input administrator for a London-based research company involved in gathering investment information for the food and renewable technology industries. I am a graduate of Bath Spa University with a BA (Hons) in Psychology and English (2/1).