Railway Kids

Les Humbles fitter & turner, Cardiff Workshops



Yes, no ... I mainly knocked round with railway boys. Yes, quite a few of them in the little country town. Nearly all their dads worked at the quarry. As a boy we ... my dad had the use of the passes and we moved about a little bit on the country. We'd trips here and there, limited of course, because we never, my dad never earned a lot of money in those days. Just after the war things were only starting to pick up, so we were only able to go to places that weren't too far away.

Carol Swanson

My father worked for the railway and he had ... he was always fiddling around with model train sets. And I used to go out and watch him do that and running all the wires for all these models ... for all lines and everything like that and it just got me interested.

Frank Bollins Secretary, AMWU, now retired. Former sheetmetal worker

My first recollection of any real merit arose from the fact that my father was one of the initial rail motor fitters appointed in the period when rail motors first came into the system in the early 1920s.

Janet Oakden

Well, my father didn't work on the railway, he was a pipe fitter. But my grandfather was a guard and a couple of uncles were gangers. This was back in England on the London North Eastern Railway. So they all lived in a railway house and we were there quite often. We just sort of grew up near railway tracks and steam locomotives and things of this kind. My parents used to send me out to play with all the other little girls with all the dolls and that and I used to leave the dolls with the other girls and go down and train spot.

Stan Jones

Well, I became a railway worker because I had a family background associated with the railways and ... I knew that my grandfather had worked in the railways, that my father had worked there and uncles and cousins and so on had worked on the railways. So after I tried half a dozen different jobs and didn't like any of them, I decided, well, the railways must be a better place to work in.

Railway Voices a CD of Australian railway workers stories with songs and poems