The Cash Railway

‘Oh no’, you say. ‘Another post about a railway?’

And I say, ‘why not?’ After all I do bill myself as a nerd.

But actually, this is different and this will bring back memories for all sorts of people. For this was something that you found in use in shops.

As a child, I loved it if my mum took me to the Co-op household department. They had a cash railway – one of those overhead money carrying systems that had a central cashier, often in a sort of cage and a system of cables which could carry small containers to the various different counters.

The counter staff sold something, put the money and the bill in the container, pulled the lever and the little container whizzed overhead to the cashier. They stamped the bill and made sure the right change was in the container, pulled their lever and off it went back to the counter.

Times change and the old Co-op closed and the cash railway went.

But when I moved to Devizes, the department store, Sloper’s, had a cash railway. Oh what a treat, now as a sensible (ha, ha) adult, to watch those capsules race through the air to the cashier. But times changed again. Sloper’s was not profitable enough and closed. The cash railway was a thing of the past once more. But I did take some photos and here is the network of wires at the cashier desk. There are four lines, all aiming in different directions.

I’m told that once upon a time, Sloper’s also used a pneumatic tube to get bills and cash to a separate nearby property.

Sloper’s was a treasure trove of antique items. And this was 1976.

Look at that telephone on the desk. Magic.

I bought the typewriter.

No shift key here – just a completely separate set of keys for capital letters.

I no longer have the typewriter. I gave it to the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes because, obviously, it has real Wiltshire and Devizes history. And in the museum it joins Sloper’s cash railway. The museum has set up a part of it and so once again it can be seen in action.

Wilmot

I have always been a cat lover. There have not been many periods in my life when I haven’t shared a home with a cat or two.

The earliest I remember, from childhood, was a ginger lad who adopted our house. We never really named him. He was just ‘Puss’. After his departure we got a black and white cat which, officially, was called Blackett.

Then I did what young men do. I left home and got married and for a while we had no cat. But an offer was made by a colleague. We could have a kitten born in one of her husband’s barns. We wanted two felines, and it was suggested we’d be welcome to a one year old cat as well. It’s that one year old we look at today.

He hadn’t really been named by the previous owner. She referred to him as ‘Willy Mog’. We fancied a name with a bit more class so Willy Mog became Wilmot. Here he is in 1972.

Wilmot was a very even tempered, placid cat – quite unlike the kitten we got at the same time who was a right scaredy cat. And Wilmot was a character and, at times, an embarrassment. We recall the time when a neighbour had walked back from town with the baby in the pram and the shopping on the tray under the pram.  As baby was taken in, Wilmot saw his chance and grabbed lunch off that tray.

Another time he returned with paint on his paws. This, we realised, was from a house opposite where upstairs window sills were being painted.

Wilmot could be a pain if we went for a walk. He liked to come too but would reach the end of his known territory and then cry pitifully. Sometimes he’d continue to follow, but truly unhappily. On one occasion we passed a badger sett and almost lost Wilmot down the holes. He may have been lost and miserable, but a new experience was to hand. We got him out, abandoned the walk and took him home.

When Wilmot was about six, we moved from our all electric estate house to our pie in the sky wreck in the country. Wilmot came too and to keep him safe, we shut him in the lounge. There wasn’t much in this room, but when we looked in, Wilmot had done the impossible and vanished. We were entirely baffled but then a face appeared from within the chimney. Yes, there was (and is) an open fireplace but we had paid no heed to that since we had never had a fireplace before.

Wilmot was fine, but as the photo shows, he had been mostly a white cat. Now he was soot coloured.

We had a canal boat holiday booked soon after and, not being able to guarantee neighbours to care for cats, we had booked him and his friend Inca into a cattery. Wilmot must have spent a week licking himself. He came home clean.

Wilmot had a good life and lived for about 12 years. A string of cats have followed and we still have one now.

That long Welsh name

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

I love Wales. I love hearing the Welsh language and wish I spoke or understood it better. I have never really subscribed to a popular English view that the Welsh speak Welsh to annoy people from England. I rather think they speak it because it is their language – and beautiful and musical it sounds too. But Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is something of a mouthful.  The name was invented in the 19^th century in an attempt to get tourists to stop there. It certainly worked.

Of course, crucial to the development of tourism was the arrival of the railway and a railway station. Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch was first stop on Anglesey, over the Menai Bridge from the mainland.  And here is that station in 1972.

I think both my wife and I must have photographed this building. I suspect I had the Agfa and took the black and white photo and my wife had the little Canon and took the colour slide. She got more of the period car on the left.

The station opened in 1848 but was closed in 1966. Then, it was reopened after fire destroyed the rail link with the mainland and it still has a train service today.

A Cherry Picker

Actually, I don’t think we used the term cherry picker back in about 1970 when I took this photo

The scene was outside my girlfriend’s family house in the Pound Hill area of Crawley in Sussex. This was a part of Crawley – the new town. These houses were built, as we can clearly see, prior to the mass use of the motor car. But at least there were drives for off road parking, although the houses you can see shared a drive between each pair. That was fine as long as each house had just one car and kept it in the garage. These days it is probably much more of a problem for there are cars everywhere. In this photo there is not a car in sight. The only vehicle is the modern Bedford lorry with its chap about to change a street lamp bulb.

I remember what had been used before. I have a vague memory of lorries with a vertically rising platform like a kind of multilayer scissor jack. They were wound up and down by hand and the lorry had to be placed precisely because the tower had no sideways movement.

But even more I remember the electricity workers who climbed up the wooden poles with boots with ‘nails’ in the side which they banged into the pole. They also had a big strap around them and the pole. Up near the top of the pole there were a pair of footrests and the worker could lean back on his strap whilst carrying out his task.

And then along came the cherry picker which did away with these old ways.

Old signs

I commented recently on my liking of cast iron signs. Well of course, it doesn’t matter if they are cast iron or not really. I can just like old signs – and here’s a road one.

From memory, this was on the Isle of Anglesey. I took the photo in the early 1970s. This is in black and white so I’d have used an Agfa rangefinder camera and, almost certainly Ilford FP4 film. I processed black and white myself.

These days signs like this are ‘international’ in style. That means words are not used. Simple cartoon like images represent the hazard, instruction or advice. But this one has the best of both worlds. The picture of a double decker bus having to be in the middle of the road under the bridge is clear. And so, too, are the words.

No doubt much money has been spent replacing old signs with new, to meet some ruling laid down by our lords and masters in government (now surely that should read ‘our servants in government’.).

But some have slipped through, and occasionally you can come across what looks like an old sign still in situ, by the side of the road and still doing the job for which it was intended.

This one is in Ramsbury in Wiltshire and uses the dashed black and white area to mean the routes lead to the A419. It was photographed in 2012.

My life in Tickets (8)

Being a nerd doesn’t mean you can’t be just a bit romantic. So back in 1996, when we celebrated our silver wedding anniversary, it seemed right that I should fulfil a long made promise to take my wife to Paris. Of course, I was mindful of the fact that there was now a channel tunnel and a train service which ran (then) from Waterloo to Paris. That was how we would travel. And what an easy journey it was. Our son, at home from uni for the summer was able to drive us to Salisbury. We caught the train from there to Waterloo and then caught the 10.23 train – next stop Paris. Yes, I have the ticket.

It was easy for us, but not for a Spanish family who were nearby us who thought they were on the train for Brussels.

Just as the train left Waterloo a row broke out over seats. There appeared to be two sets of people with reservations for the same seats. An attendant then realised the Spanish family were on the wrong train.

Oddly, my wife had speculated about this risk before the doors closed at waterloo. Announcements were made on board telling us that this was the Paris train and those who wanted Brussels should board the train at the other platform. The word that came through loud and clear to the Spanish family was ‘Brussels’. They repeatedly heard the word and understood it. They were sure they were on the Brussels train as a result. It was just as my wife had speculated.

Of course, I don’t know how their journey panned out, but they arrived in Paris at 14.17. They had no seats for the journey. They perched on their luggage. How or when they got to Brussels was, I hope, sorted out by them.

We had a wonderful time sightseeing and, in particular, visiting art galleries. Musée D’Orsay was, for me, simply the best. And it wasn’t just because the gallery is in an old railway station although that may have helped.

Maybe sometime, I’ll find some Paris photos for this blog.

But here I shall comment on the ride. It is very, very smooth and of course, you get to travel at 300 kilometres per hour. In the tunnel, there is virtually no sensation of movement. What sticks in the mind is travelling, at some speed, through the French city of Lille. It has many tower blocks and whilst, unfelt by passengers, the train leant into the curves, it appeared that the tower blocks tilted, first one way and then the other. It was an experience I enjoyed very much. I must be mad!

On our return journey we had a stopping train (well, it stopped at Lille). The tilting towers were nothing like so noticeable at lower speed.

Charlotte Dundas

The Kennet and Avon Canal rises up its 29 locks into Devizes – locks which in the bad old days were utterly derelict but from Devizes, heading east, there was a 15 mile stretch with no locks – The Long Pound. This stretch held water but with virtually no flow on it, it was always very weedy. However, it was an ideal stretch for trip boats which could raise money to help save the canal. One such boat was known as the Charlotte Dundas. In the early 1970s, my wife and I were volunteer crew on the little boat which could carry up to 28 passengers.

The name, presumably, was chosen as the same as an early steam boat – the first one that really worked, but Dundas was also the name of the first chairman of the Kennet and Avon Canal Company.

Our Charlotte Dundas was a paddle boat – she could cope with weeds in a way screw driven vessels could not. The power came from a diesel engine and transmission was hydraulic. She was entirely double ended. Turning Charlotte Dundas just involved removing the tiller from one end and walking it around to the other. Here she is in 1980. We are not the crew. My wife and young son are on the towpath looking on.

In fact the boat had been modified a little since our day. The far end had weather protection by 1980. Back in the 70s it had been entirely open to all weathers.

The boat has just slipped away from Devizes Wharf. I guess the steersman, standing on the back is just tidying his mooring rope. Paddle wheel drive and slow speeds made for hard steering. We always had a person ready to assist by reversing one of the paddle wheels if need be. Maybe controls had been altered by this time for when we crewed old Charlotte, one person was always by the central engine house to manage the paddle wheels.

Charlotte had a flat bottom which made her rock and roll very easily.

Times change. Once the canal was open, better boats could do the trip work. I’m not sure where the Charlotte Dundas is now.

A canal side mile post

What is it about cast iron signs? I love them. They often give information and tell some history at the same time. Just look at this one, photographed by me back in 1976.

Well first and formost it told me I was five miles from Braunston. That’s a canal junction where the Oxford Canal meets the Grand Union Canal. Braunston is in Northamptonshire.

But this wonderfully long lived mile post was set up by the G.J.C.Co. That’s the Grand Junction Canal Company.

The Grand Junction was the original name of the canal from London to Braunston – now part of the Grand Union.  The first bits of canal, around Braunston, opened in 1796 so there’s a fair chance the old sign dates from the 18^th century.

If you search on the web you’ll find lots of these signs – now all neatly painted and properly supported above ground level. They look good, but I like the lost world look of this one from days of yore.

The Good Life

Back in the 1970s, and before a lovely TV comedy series took the name, we lived the good life. We were, I suppose, in that stage of being what now gets called ‘DINKY’ – dual income – no kids yet. We scrimped and saved and bought our very run down house with its dubious right of access – and a very large plot of land. All worked out well, in the end, so we were very lucky. We could indulge in a bit of self-sufficiency.

There were times (for we rapidly turned into three of us with one income) when our finances were horribly tight and we were eating weeds as vegetables.

For milk we kept a goat.

So that’s me milking Shamrock the goat. I have temporarily tethered her with a spike through a large metal collar which could take a bell. Her kid clearly wants to play.

When you know the source of your milk you soon get to learn more about the link between the animal’s food and the milk you get. If your goat has rubbish to eat then you get milk with a rubbish taste – it gives off a goaty aroma. Feed her well and your goat will give you a good supply of very pleasing milk.

Nothing was waste in those days. That’s our front lawn, allowed to grow so that Shamrock the goat could enjoy the lush grass. There’s an electric net around her – which was more to control the kid.

If we had a kid, we must have used the services of a Billy Goat. Now they have a truly pungent smell. We once walked one from one side of the village to another, using ropes to keep it under control. Thirty years on I can still smell ‘Billy’ on that rope.

Eventually, the demands of work and life made twice a day milking a problem and we returned to the milkman for our supplies. But it was fun whilst it lasted and it is one of those things I am glad to have done.

Britain’s most Northerly Railway Junction

Back in 1970, when we travelled around Scotland by rail, I was disappointed not to be able to get to Thurso, the most northerly station in Britain. There was a choice of termini in Caithness and we found that only Wick served our needs so Wick it had to be. For the next 34 years it grieved me that I hadn’t travelled the 10 km (if it was straight) to Thurso. But in 2004, prior to travelling to Orkney, we were near Thurso and we took the opportunity to head down to Britain’s most northerly junction – Georgemas Junction. And here is that junction.

The ‘main’ line here with double track, is heading off towards Inverness. The Thurso branch curves away to the right. At that time Georgemas Junction still had goods facilities in use. That’s the siding on the left. Behind us, the line heads on to Wick.

Georgemas Junction is still a passenger station and here’s the waiting train.

It is heading for Wick and it will return before going south to Inverness.

That sign tells us it 1s 147¼ miles to Inverness.

We took a Thurso train. Thurso station has bi-lingual signs – English and Gaelic.

So there we were – the most northerly rail line in Britain had been travelled. Yippee!