Phillip Sanderson

As a school boy in the 50,s I used to walk the five miles or so to go trainspotting at Doncaster Station (not much else to do at that time lol) my first memory was of the Mallard going through Doncaster station very fast ,the whole station shook, at 15 I left school and went to work in a garage £3 per week, a mate of mine asked me if I fancied applying for a job where he worked cleaner/fireman I was told they were desperate for firemen and I would not be cleaning long and so it turned out within a couple of weeks around a dozen of us were passing out to become firemen £11.50 per week, thought I had won the pools lol, this was in the last days of steam and Wath Loco where I worked was Diesel /Electric so had very little time on steam loco’s, when we became firemen we had to put our work preferences down as to location where we would be prepared to work I put Doncaster as I lived nearer there than Wath had two very happy years at Wath when I was called into the office and told there was a firemans vacancy at Doncaster for me if I wanted it and was advised to take it,

I had realised that railway men were a community the shifts they worked made it difficult to have a normal life outside it, at that time Drivers were allowed to supervise the firemen as they drove the trains which over the years was part of the training of future drivers and I had worked with some great drivers at Wath but decided onwards and upwards so to speak turned out a great move as Wath closed not to long afterwards

So onto my 10 years or so at Doncaster wow what a job traveling up and down between Newcastle and kings Cross on the main GNER line a driver once told me if it weren’t for the shifts you would need a university degree to get this job, many great memories of this time but two (not so great) come to mind one was seeing my first body on the tracks just looked like a bundle of bloody rags with a leg bone sticking out of it, I guess that is what a 700 ton train doing 100 mph would do to you, the second was very frightening but not so gory going down the bank (a long stretch between Grantham and Peterborough at 100mph we heard a tremendous bang and the engine started rolling from side to side the driver applied the brakes (full on) we thought we must have hit something I wound the window down and could see a big part sticking out of the first carriage we stopped got off the train and put the track wires across the other lines to put all the signals to red (cannot remember what they called them) ,we could see the problem a tyre had come off one of the loco’s wheels bounces under the loco gone up through the first carriage and out through the side fortunately no one was hurt needless to say all hell broke loose this had never happened on a class 47 before or so we were told afterwards, people arrived in helicopters and by road after a quick discussion between the Driver and guard it was decided I was the best option to go back to the last signal box we past (about 5 miles) putting detonators on the track to protect the train fortunately I was very fit back then and did not take too long another eventually engine arrived to take the train forward ,our loco and the first carriage limped into Peterborough just in time for us to have a bite to eat and take charge of the train from London that we should have been coming back with .

There was a lot of follow up to that but memory fails me, after about 10 years the terrible shifts took their toll and I took a voluntary redundancy and went on to work in industry for the next 40 years or so often went back in my dreams to the days of flying up and down the main line lol.