Mrs Margaret Grady remembers
When you became 18 you had to go to a job of national importance for the War effort. A job came up at Richmond Station. A man came from York to interview me. I started on the 12th February 1945. I first worked in the passenger parcels' office. We were so busy that there were three shifts, early, middle and late. This was the case then with all the departments, booking office, porters, signalmen and so on. I started on the middle shift. The booking office was on the front and the parcels office through the double doors beyond with more double doors onto the platform. We unloaded the guards van and sometimes there was an extra van because of the volume - officers' tin trunks, bed rolls etc. We had to "sheet" them all out, that is to fill in delivery sheets. We had high desks as they did in the booking office. We used to stand at the desks although we had a stool. We had a little passenger delivery van driven by a man called Joe Boddy who came from Darlington and had been doing the job for years. He died shortly after he retired. We were sometimes assisted by a goods wagon, flat-backed and with a small articulated cab and trailer.
We used to receive boxes of fish for local shops, e.g. Cherrys and Swallows. Mr Bell from The Green had a fish round and used to come down to collect with his horse and cart. We handled school trunks going to The Friary Boarding House and to the Convent School and also trunks of Army children on school holidays. When they were going back they would bring the baggage down to the station and we would send it on, having weighed and charged for it according to weight and mileage. If they had already purchased a ticket and brought the luggage, this was known as PLA (Passenger Luggage in Advance). If the luggage went with them it was very cheap but if unaccompanied it was quite expensive.
I married on the 26th May 1945, Billy having come on embarkation leave before going to India and having proposed. I moved from parcels into the booking office. The volume of parcels reduced towards the end of the war as things got quieter. Before I started maternity leave on 13th December 1947 the station was preparing for Christmas leave. We could not do bookings at the counter because of the amount of traffic. Many soldiers of course returned to Scotland for Hogmanay and there was also Easter leave. It was all pretty hectic. I cannot enlarge on Roger Spencer's account. I went back to work in the booking office in May 1951. It is amazing how many people remember National Service and arriving to start it at Richmond Station. I know that Bishop Menin, the retired Suffragan Bishop of Knaresborough, has vivid memories of the station as has Reverend Allan Reed who is still involved with St Mary's Parish Church.
I stayed working in the booking office, originally under a chief clerk, Mr William Baynes, a local man, who retired during my time at the station. One of his daughters, Peggy Baynes, still lives in Richmond. I worked for three other chief clerks before I finished. I remained in the booking office until I retired in August 1967. On each shift there would be the chief clerk, myself and a porter. When I first started on Mr Baynes' shift there was a little porter called RH Jefferson, known as Jeff. On another shift a porter was Tom Eales. They used to shunt the goods trains in the morning.
In the wartime we had two lady "signalmen". One came from Middlesbrough and the other from Hartlepool so they had to lodge here. I have a little photograph of them which I shall try and find. There were also lady porters and they were just as good as the men porters although the men had to do the heavy work and clean the men's toilets! The station did not have electric light until 1948 - up to then it was gas.
In the booking office we had big ticket racks. For ordinary passengers (civilians) there were not so many printed tickets but we also had blanks. We had to look up the price in a fares book. We wrote the ticket out and recorded that into a register - the destination, the number of the ticket and the price. We had a dating machine for the tickets; we put the ticket in one way and turned it round to do both ends for a return. Eventually we got a double dating machine. We then got two because we had double windows in the booking hall. The larger amount of tickets was for the forces. We issued them against warrants which the Army gave the soldiers. They were called Forces Duty Tickets. We had blanks because we could not have printed tickets for everywhere they were going for instance to the remoter areas of Ireland and Scotland. When they travelled to Ireland we had to do a paper ticket with more details except to Belfast or Dublin which were printed. We had printed tickets for major destinations such as York, Leeds, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Birmingham and Bristol. Officers always had first class tickets on duty (but not always when paying themselves).
When we got a group of say 20/25 on a posting, all went on one warrant and therefore we issued only one paper ticket. Major Judd the Director of Music of the Signals used to say send list when the band was going on leave against one warrant. He always gave us 5 shillings for our tea fund! I remember the Duke of Kent coming in to change his warrant. The Chief Clerk asked "A spot of leave, sir?" to which the Duke replied "Yes". We got used to his car running around with the registration K7 (presumably because he was then seventh in line for the throne). We got tickets to attend the Central Stadium when the Queen and Prince Philip came to the Camp. She left from the siding near Camp Centre where we used to go to issue tickets. I remember seeing the Duke and Katherine Worsley there.
The station closed in 1969. Well before I left in 1967 there had been a threat to close the station but an appeal against it was successful. Lady Serena James supported the appeal; she used to travel a lot on the train. When she heard the result she sent a bottle of champagne down for us to celebrate - we drank it out of cups as we had no glasses. We didn't have a refreshments room. There was a separate station café originally run by Alf Douglas and then the Bagleys. Just this side of it we had the YMCA which provided tea and cakes when the soldiers were waiting.
Along with issuing tickets we did train times and also booked seats. We had a phone which was like Morse and contacted the stations down the line to Darlington. Darlington was: long - short, Richmond short - long - short and Moulton had 5 dots. We used to get messages from Darlington about special wagons, on the front or on the back and sometimes they contained horses usually for Lord Zetland. When I first worked at the station the phone was a coin box (so that it could not be borrowed for outgoing calls) and that was the phone on which we used to receive calls - 3210.
We had to collect the tickets off the trains when the ticket inspector was not on duty, his hours being 8.30 am to 5 pm. For a long time the ticket inspector was Mr French who lived in one of the railway cottages at Catterick Bridge. I lived in a railway cottage in Richmond from 1960 for about 4 years. It was No. 6, the one next to the signal box. It was convenient for work, a bit too convenient, but they were happy days.
27th September 2004