 Trevor Malkin on the Driffield Railway |
DRIFFIELD AND WOLDS GENEALOGY |
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Trade Directories Parish Registers Driffield Parish Church Baptisms 1836-1850 (incomplete) A - L Driffield Parish Church Baptisms 1836-1850 (incomplete) M - Z Flamborough Marriages by Banns 1754-1779 North Burton (Burton Fleming) Parish Registers Wesleyan Baptisms 1837-1867 A-H only Monumental Inscriptions North Frodingham & North Dalton Cemetery MIs BMD Announcements &c from the Driffield Times Religion List of Priors etc of Monastic Establishments on the Yorkshire Wolds Driffield Congregational Church Religious Meeting Houses Licenced 1708-1808 The Blockhouses of Kingston Upon Hull (the persecution of local Catholics) WW1 Soldiers who died in WW1 with a connection to Driffield WW2 Social History History of the Driffield Post Office Biographies &c They left Nafferton in 1863 - Where are they now? Some Old Driffield Schoolmasters Thomas Saulsbury Wright- one of yours? Celebrities of the Yorkshire Wolds Miscellaneous Useful links & Online family trees
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THE DRIFFIELD RAILWAYS By Trevor Malkin, Driffield Email t.malkin@tiscali.co.uk (Circa 1940 – 1955) It is now the 21st millennium and as a Driffield lad, I notice that the Driffield where I was born and brought up has changed and is still changing it seems evermore rapidly. Unless some of these changes are written down, they will disappear forever, lost to future historians, family researchers and others who show an interest in the town. One big change is to the Driffield railway system. Where now a mere handful of men are employed, it can be shown that in the period during and after the second-world war, employees directly employed by the railway at Driffield would exceed forty. It is not only those employees I will try and place on record, but I would like also to record some of the unique place names used by those railwaymen, the locations of which have now mostly disappeared under various modern developments. Of course, the railway was much busier in those days, both with passenger and goods traffic. In addition to the existing Hull – Scarborough line, trains also ran to Market Weighton and Malton, in the guise of the Malton Dodger. Alf Limburn, an old relief signalman who still lives in Driffield, can remember recording as many as 125 train movements before lunch. My family lived near the railway and my father was employed there. In addition, his brother became the stationmaster at Rillington and another brother was the crossing-keeper for a while at Watton. These family connections gave me unique access to and perhaps understanding of the railway system itself, to its ways of working and to those magical places contained within it. I later worked for a time on the self same railway at various stations between Bridlington and Beverley. Nowadays of course, all the lines except the Hull – Scarborough line have gone, as have the sidings with the magical names. There were five signal boxes regulating the passage of the trains through Driffield. Wansford Road, Eastgate or Depot crossing, Station, Skerne Road and Driffield West on Beverley Road. All allowed vehicles and pedestrians across for the footbridge at Eastgate had not been built. Each of the boxes was allocated two signalmen and relief signalmen attended when necessary. At some of the crossings, for example Wansford Road and Eastgate, signalmen lived in the railway house adjacent. The track itself was routinely maintained by lengthmen, whose duties included track and lineside maintenance, securing the wooden chocks in the lines and trimming the lamps in all the signals. It was the days of steam trains and in summer many lineside fires would be started and have to be put out by these men. They generally worked out of sheds or ‘lobbys’ situated at the lineside, where tea was brewed and the world put to rights. The operation of the railway was divided into a passenger and a goods department, each with its own foreman and clerical staff, under the overall control of the stationmaster who lived in his house on the platform of the railway station itself. This house still exists on the Bridlington platform, which also housed a booking office, waiting room with fire, a railway buffet and a branch of W.H.Smith. The booking office contained a parcel’s office and the platform was often piled high with parcels received for delivery in the town. The passenger foreman was in immediate supervision and there was a porter on duty at all times. The staff felt aggrieved if they allowed a train to be late. The passenger department was centred on the station itself whereas the goods department was much more spread out. It was here where my father worked. The main area containing the goods office, the foreman’s office, the men’s lobby, transport department and the goods warehouse was situated in an area known as the goods yard on the south side of the Eastgate crossing. It is now Riverhead Gardens. The goods office had five clerks, including myself at one time. In addition to the normal clerical support, the business of hiring corn sacks out to farmers for the harvest was conducted from here. A siding went directly into the goods warehouse, where goods were unloaded onto lorries for delivery into the town and the huge rural area extending from the coast inland to Thixendale. One lorry was kept going all day just delivering to Woolworths and the Lance’s warehouse in Market Place. The railway had its own lorries and drivers, with the maintenance being done at its own garage within the yard. A lot of the drivers lived in railway properties in St Johns Place, off Albion Street. There were some 7/8 lorries working from the yard. The railway company had the contract to collect milk from outlying farms on a daily basis and deliver it to the milk-processing factory on Wansford Road. The factory was situated between Meadow Lane and the railway line, now the housing development including Hudson Drive and Mallard Close. The lorries would leave in the early morning and go round the farms delivering empty cans (milk churns) and collecting the full ones. A long line of lorries would stretch along Wansford Road waiting their turn to unload which was normally completed by lunchtime. Each lorry then returned to the goods yard, unloaded the empty churns and loaded with goods for delivery in the afternoon. The goods included a lot of animal feed sold from depots situated within the railway environs. Drivers would call at outlying country stations to collect goods received there for delivery. When they returned in the early evening, each driver had to load his lorry with the empty milk churns ready for the next morning. They could be long days even in good weather but in those days, it used to snow in the winter! Immediately across Eastgate from the entrance was the huge linseed oil and cake mill, later the sugar mills and now derelict. The mill had two of its own sidings, one on the outside and one entering from the Wansford Road end and going into the mill itself. Two other warehouses had their own sidings, one on Beverley Road and one off Skerne Road. There were four other yards or sidings used regularly and in general suited to particular types of goods traffic. Only one was permanently manned and this was the Coal Depot with its vehicular access off Albion Street. A railway house and weigh office was situated there. Between the coal depot and Eastgate was a yard known as Wall Top. The level of this yard was raised so that the railway workers could carry sacks directly into the railway wagons without the need to lift. It was useful to load corn and flour from the flourmills. This yard also had a private fuel facility for the sale of oil products. On the other side of the coal depot, was a large yard going right up to the Driffield main street. It was called Front Yard and had a crane and a ramp for loading vehicles directly on to flat railway wagons. It was here that I remember long lines of army tanks being loaded on to special trains for transporting to the south of England in preparation for the D.Day landings. The tanks had been on the training grounds on the Wolds. The remaining yard was the Cattledocks, the entrance of which was along a small lane at the rear of the Wansford Road signal cabin. Again this was a raised area, where cattle and sheep could be walked from the cattle market and directly into the awaiting cattle wagons. On some market days, two special trains would leave for the west and south Yorkshire conurbations. Railway workers would service these yards from the general pool in the goods yard as the goods traffic dictated. Additional support was provided as and when required from Hull and Bridlington, both in manpower and engines. On several days during the week, for example, a shunting engine would come from Bridlington to be used during the day just moving goods wagons around the various Driffield yards and sidings. The area of the railway was extensive and in addition the railway company owned other adjacent land. For example, my family rented a small farmyard in Riverhead from the railway company. It is now the houses known as Beechlands. I remember the air of prosperity, which surrounded the railway and the economic support it provided both for the town and its many employees. It was a dominant influence in my upbringing and one I have fond memories of. The Driffield railway employed many hard working men, including some wonderful characters, and I have tried to list them with apologies to any I may have forgotten. (I have long since been interested in preserving details of the Driffield railway system, which meant so much to me and my family. \It was very influential in my upbringing. My father worked there and I was also a railway clerk at Driffield and other stations along the line. I thought that a good place to start would be to try and record at least the names of those people working there in the period I am most familiar with. At any one time, approximately 50 people were employed at Driffield. Some of them and/or their relatives are still alive and one has to be careful. Should there be any contact regarding any of them, I will most probably have other details such as addresses, work undertaken, relatives, etc. The other aspect of the Driffield railway fast disappearing now, is the names of some of its areas and locations, such as the cattle dock, wall top and front yard. I have tried to build some of these into my family biography to try and ensure the names live on and can be indentified to any future researcher). DRIFFIELD RAILWAY STAFF circa 1940 - 1960 Goods (Clerical) Bob Randall, Chief Clerk; Percy Ashbridge, Stan Turner; Edna Young Passenger (Clerical) Ces Potter Chief Clerk; Syd Field, Chief Clerk; Hughie Kneeshaw; Horace Wharrie Stationmasters Driffield - Fred Newlove Cranswick - Tom Newton Nafferton - Tom Iveson Lockington - Jack Thompson Driffield Transport Section Dick Ward; Charlie Tather; Cyril Kitching; Scottie Jones; Len Straker; Arthur Batty; George Batty; Ken Batty; Eric Watts; Harold Walton, i/c garage with assistant Porters/ Foremen, etc Bill Carter, Passenger Foreman; A.N. Other, Goods Foreman; Ted Grinsdale, Passenger; Dick Consitt, Passenger; Harry Kilvington, Passenger; Rufus Mock, Goods; Ernie Stork, Goods; Harry Ibsen, Coal Depot; Ron Whitaker, Shunter Tom Bell - Hutton Cranswick Signalmen Station - Ernie Elvidge; Ken Hyde Eastgate (Depot Crossing) - Cyril Conland; Tommy Kell Wansford Road - Harry Woodward; Jack Eccles Skerne Road - Horace Briggs; Harry Hurd Driffield West - Charlie Hope; Alf Wilson Nafferton - George Jackson; Tom Evison Cranswick - Maurice Peckitt; Dough Marshall Arram - Fred Tait; Bob Lyon Lengthmen Billy Moate; Laurie Wood; Jack Wriggleswoth; Jim Appleby; Fred Atkin; Jack Johnson; Vic Yeadon; Arthur Harrison Fitters Fred Hornby; Tom Harrison Thanks to Trevor Malkin for taking the time to share his memories with everyone. This information will be invaluable to future researchers and those who come after us who just want to read a little bit about our town and its people. If anyone can add anything to the above, or would be so kind as to share their own memories and experiences, working for the local railways, please get in touch. If you remember Trevor Malkin and want to mull over old times, or wish to get in touch about any of those mentioned, Trevor's email is provided above.
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