-
(Bye Tony)!
Tony and I are in the same class at school! Work choice of the railway and he asked if he might ride the 12 mile to work on the railway with me? A quiet 15 yr old not so energetic on hills! But we would set out at 4 AM to give us 2 hours of cycling for plenty of time to get to work! His phone line was busy when I tried to contact him last year? And now he is gone! We would clean steam engines together, Plus run as mail messengers and turns etc! He would eventually go shunting while I went banking heavy trains up St David’s bank! I took the 3rd pref to live in a GW Rail hostel in Bristol to avoid redundancy! Share a bedroom with four other fireman! strange engines and sheds? Good nights out though? Strange blokes and long distance crews working trains away from home and out for a pint with the lads! But I wonder how many of them are still about this day? And Duck days of toil at Red Cow where the secret is to have your engine ready but also quiet for talk of Russian missiles and nuclear bombs for Cuba, and a young singer Eddy Cochran to die in a car crash, and the young Quarrymen to cut a disc as a new group called the Beatles, and 35011, 35028, 35029 Merchant navies leave me to go off to other places, but are replaced but still return as ‘Others’! But then I lose Tony, replaced by my Triumph motorbike! And now the parting is always, Just a few words in a local papers ‘mention’! Tony. WW2-to late 2025? where’s time gone? A couple of kids clean Blackmore Vale for a cup of tea?+ memory?
