Walter

 My Uncle Walter, with me wearing his locoman's cap, Crewe, 1956.

When we lived in Crewe, that was, until 1960, Walter was a frequent visitor to our house. He was very special to me, being my Mum's brother and something of a legend in the family. According to family stories, he'd lied about his age and was taken on as a cleaner at Crewe North when he was fifteen. Then it was the endless round of box-diving and ash disposal, until becoming a passed cleaner during the war.

 

Near the end of the war, he was firing on an old LNWR loco on a freight south of Crewe when they were strafed by a nazi plane. Walter said he fully explored the tool cupboards on the tender, but when he emerged from where he'd been hiding, his mate had just stuck to his post. Not sure I could have driven on regardless, especially in that exposed cab!

Thanks to Walter, I had quite a few footplate rides, usually in Gresty road sidings on a shunter. Walter had scant regard for authority. I often used to take him his lunch at the station with my Mum when he was on a Liverpool turn, or go down to the sheds with him to collect his wages. It would have been the school holidays, I suppose. One such day, a forbidding man approached Walter as he was showing me two huge locomotives, slumbering in light steam, waiting for work. I was in awe of the gigantic beasts, seemingly ready to spring at any moment with immense power.The man asked who the hell I was and didn't Walter know that children weren't allowed in the sheds? Walter gave the man a contemptuous reply and we carried on unchallenged. I afterwards learned that the official was the assistant shedmaster!

 

Everyone seemed to know Walter, but that doesn't mean he was universally popular. He had something of a feud with the well-known driver and writer, "Piccolo Pete" Johnson. I think Johnson's crime was to let it show that he loved his job. Walter was always ultra-nonchalant, calling the locos "camels", "black hearted bitches" or in the case of the Duchesses, "coal gobblers". Johnson tells a story in his book about one driver, Baddeley, who couldn't get on with Walter, and to discourage him from going out with his daughter, drove a Duchess on full regulator for a week of Walter's turns as his fireman. Walter feigned boredom, even though they would sometimes arrive back on shed with an empty tender!

Walter gave me a Hornby clockwork railway when I was three, then a Hornby Dublo "Duchess of Montrose" when I was five. My parents weren't generous, but he always was. Much later, when I was in my twenties, I rode with him a few times in the cabs of diesels and electrics. Once, we were walking down the side of the train in Crewe when a woman in the carriage looked down her nose at him. She didn't like the look of his steam era jacket and locoman's hat. He laughed and said, "You may well look, missus, but I'm the scruffy bugger that's takin' yer to Birmingham!"

 

He knew Bishop Eric Treacy quite well and told me that when in charge of a train, he would often have to put on a show at a pre-arranged spot for the Bishop's photographs. Walter always referred to him as "Bish", which was funny, because for some daft reason, that was everybody's name for Walter!

When I was eleven, Walter appeared at the back door with a bike for me. I suspect it had fallen out of a van. I'd been desperate for a bike, but my parents couldn't afford one. My Mum asked Walter what he'd done with the train and he replied that he'd parked it in the sidings because it just wouldn't steam. I walked back with him and sure enough, there was a van train in the sidings, with a very grimy 8F at the head. For some reason, the loco promptly felt well again...

 

Needless to say, that bike was soon in use, riding to loco sheds and trying to catch the last throes of North Western steam. If only I'd had a camera!

 

 

Walter with an unidentified driver, waiting to come off shed at Crewe North.

 

Above- Walter firing a "semi" going at speed through Oxenhope. The loco is 46241, "City of Edinburgh".