Miss Peggy Baynes recalls
My father started on the railways as a clerk when twelve and a half years old at Danby where his family were then living. He had been born in Pickering where his father was a blacksmith but he was not interested in that. He was more into figures. Father came to Richmond before the First World War to be a booking clerk at the station. They first lived in Oakleigh Cottages.
When my father came back from the War in the early 1920s they came back to Richmond. They had to find accommodation from the Council inside the Castle - Mum called it Castle Yard. The Council more or less condemned those properties and they moved down to Whitcliffe Place, as did a lot of their neighbours. My twin and I were born in 8 Whitcliffe Place in 1928.
Because it was too far for my father to walk and particularly because he was on shifts, we moved down to the station in November or December 1933. I remember our coming out of the Dundas Street School and being collected by our mother and going straight to the new house at the station. There were nine of us living there. It was No.8 Station Cottages, one of the red brick ones and the second on the left. They have been altered now. There was no electricity or mains drainage at the time.
We moved from there in 1947 to another railway house, 31A Frenchgate, until 1956 when my father retired. It was one of two railway houses together. We could not move into it until the big snows had gone in 1947. I recall my father still keeping hens along by the engine shed when we went to Frenchgate.
The station and the river were our playground. There were a lot of children living at the station before and during the Second War. We would sneak into the waiting room and warm ourselves by its fire. One porter used to shoo us off. We used the platforms for roller-skating. We knew what times the trains came in. There would be about twelve a day. The second which came in in the morning was the school train, which arrived about 8.30/ 8.45 am. Pupils went back on the school train at 4pm. There were several more trains after that.
Father worked early and late shifts, early until 1pm one week and 1pm until the last train the next week. I think he may have worked every other weekend. We used to attend Easby Church and we would walk along the line, or through the wood if we had plenty of time.
The station being our playground as I have said, we would ride on the trains from time to time when they were turning round. The engines always pulled into the station and then pulled out a bit.
I did not have much to do with the warehouse side but I remember the racehorses. They came and went from the "dock end" between the station building and the warehouse. There is no sign of it now. Father came to know the trainers including the Peacocks very well. He became interested in horse racing but not betting. So have I. The horse carriages were specially made and were a form of truck/horse box. The side came right down on to the road. The horses could walk straight in and they could tether them. Each could take about three. At one end there was a seating place for stable lads/grooms so that they could keep an eye on them. They would go to such racecourses as Redcar and Ripon - places like that but not too far.
King George VI and Queen Elizabeth came by train to Richmond station to visit Richmond and Catterick Camp. I think it was end of August/beginning of September 1939. My granddad was staying with us at the time and he was there that day. The station was closed while the royal train came in and then they put it in a siding with guards on it. We were sitting on the wall watching. We couldn't find Granddad and thought he had missed it all. However he told us afterwards that he saw them from the warehouse and as they passed the Queen gave him a personal wave.
In the early days of the war, a wooden building was erected outside the station on the grass area to the right (as one went into the station yard). It was at the back of the little wooden café which at the time was run by an old gentleman called Sam. The building was for the YMCA canteen for the troops. It had a lady manageress and an assistant Enid Foster, the daughter of Jack Foster one of the porters at the station. Volunteer ladies used to help and in fact my twin and I used to go at weekends when it was particularly busy with all the trains coming and going. I cannot remember when it closed down but I do know that it was taken down and removed almost overnight. The YMCA provided food and refreshments. The opening times coincided with the coming and going of the trains and it could have been late sometimes when it closed.
During the war I had three sisters working at The Post Office at Catterick Camp. They knew about the mail and all mail came by train to Richmond. Mail vans came down from both Richmond and the Camp to collect from there.
I shall never forget the Sunday in May 1940. Father was very busy. Trains kept pulling in to the station. Hundreds of soldiers came off them. They were in ragged uniforms and dirty and dejected. All day the poor things sat up against the wall if they could. I didn't know where they were from but later learned that they were from Dunkirk.
Then there was the day of the explosion at Catterick Bridge Station. We were playing hockey on the pitch at the then new High School. We heard a huge, big bang and watched smoke come up. People said it must have been a raid but nobody saw any planes. We didn't know until we got back home at the station and my mother told us. I cannot remember much about the stationmasters but I know one was called Mr. Ward. Fortunately the outgoing school train had got through. The next due into Richmond had arrived. It was not long before it took my father and the stationmaster to Catterick Bridge. They were first on the scene. The booking clerk, Nancy Richardson was killed in the booking office. Mr Gibson, the stationmaster, was also killed. The roof had been torn off the stationmaster's house. It was a scene of devastation. My father was deeply affected by the explosion and quite down, as he had been friendly with them all. Every other house on the left from Catterick Bridge to Scorton on the line side was damaged. Nobody could say why it was alternate houses.
I began work at North Cowton School in October 1946. I went down on the 8am train to Moulton. I kept a bicycle at the other end and rode to and from North Cowton. I went to work every morning in the winter of 1947 except one day. I went out on the train to Moulton. The weather was really bad. The next train to Richmond came in so I hopped on it. The head teacher was not best pleased but there were no more trains during the day after that and I would have been stranded.
One Monday morning during the same winter there was still a lot of snow about - all between the lines. We set off beautifully and went slowly because of the points. All of a sudden it stopped. I was in the front carriage. That stayed on the lines but the carriages behind had slipped off. They say it was only the packed snow which stopped those carriages from sliding into the river. It was suspected that the signalman might have pulled the points too early. They disconnected the first coach from the others and moved the people from those. We went off with just one carriage and reached Moulton. It was just a little late. That was the last train out of Richmond that day. The first one back came in about 4pm. I just had a strange feeling about coming home and finding it was the first train back. They would have had to get cranes and breakdown people from Darlington. It was not long after that that we moved up to Frenchgate.
The engine called The Green Howard was christened on a Saturday morning at the station. I cannot remember when but do recall that before that they came and built stands under the station roof. Nor can I remember who christened it - perhaps because we were kept out of sight! I recall that Mum and Dad went off on the train to Darlington afterwards to go shopping which is where Mum usually did her shopping. I think it was before the war judging from the photo of Mum and Dad taken at the time.
We went nowhere except by train. Sunday School outings - everything went on trains. I would be about 14 or 15 before I first went on a bus. It was quite a novelty for us.
As I have said things were powered by gas. Father used to have to go every month to read the gas meter in what he called the "Gas House" which was a little stone building. It was at the right side end of the bridge (coming from the town) about a yard from the end of the bridge just below the top of the wall. It had a little sloping roof and was behind the stationmaster's garden.
Father retired when he was 65 in 1956. There was a presentation by the stationmaster of a canteen of cutlery which I still have. I have a photo of the presentation taken by The Northern Echo.