Train Drivers
The route to becoming a driver
Traditionally, boys were recruited onto the railway at the age of fourteen as engine cleaners with only a basic education. After a year or so of laborious engine cleaning combined with general shed duties, such as assisting the boiler-smiths and fitters, they would be examined and passed out by a locomotive inspector as being fit for firing duties.
Loco Cleaning
4468 Mallard crew after world record run 3 July 1938, 124.5 mph
Driver Joseph Duddington, fireman Thomas Bray and inspector Sid Jenkins
Now re-classified as Passed Cleaners, from this point on they could be used by the shed foremen as firemen on such workings as local goods trips or yard shunting. Incredible as it now seems, there was no paid, formal training at all. Cleaners taught themselves and attended unpaid Mutual Improvement Classes (MICs) run by experienced drivers and firemen in their own time, often between church and brass band practice on Sunday morning in a driver's front parlour!
Eventually a cleaner would obtain a full time fireman's appointment, often posted to a depot far from home, beginning the slow progression through the rosters, called links. This would see them starting on shed, local and shunting work, gradually venturing further afield, then onto semi-fast passenger work and long-haul freights before finally getting onto express passenger trains.
Promotion through the links and grades was on a rigid system based on length of service or seniority, what is commonly known as 'Buggins' Turn'! After ten years or so, and still studying in his own time, a fireman would be examined and passed for driving, becoming a Passed Fireman, thereafter being available for the most lowly driving duties, usually shunting or preparation & disposal of locomotives. Finally, perhaps in his late thirties or early forties he would obtain promotion to Driver and begin the long haul through the links all over again, perhaps not becoming a 'top link' express driver until a few years before retirement.
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