Fire and Steam (41 page)

By the late 1930s, however, the financial position of the Big Four was becoming untenable. On average, between 1935 and 1939, the Great Western gave the highest dividends (2.75 per cent), with the LMS on 2.7 per cent, while the Southern's shareholders received just 0.65 per cent and the LNER paid nothing. By the outbreak of the Second World War, only Great Western was paying a dividend. Jack Simmons is unequivocal about where the blame lies for the parlous state of the Big Four's finances: ‘Whereas in the 1830s and 1840s,
laissez-faire
was the orthodox policy expected of governments, in the 1930s that policy was
clearly outmoded. In fact, the Government refused to intervene not from any devotion to the principle of
laissez-faire
but from timidity.'
³⁵

The companies realized that they needed to do more to protect their interests and in 1938 launched ‘the square deal' campaign, seeking to be allowed to fix their own freight rates and fares, just as their rivals could. They argued that the railways faced bankruptcy if they were not given the same commercial freedom. Whereas before the First World War there had been fewer than 100,000 vehicles on British roads, there were now 1.8 million cars and nearly half a million lorries. The road haulage industry, with all the wit of a Jeremy Clarkson, countered with the slogan ‘Give the railways a square wheel'.

THIRTEEN

AND THEN THERE WAS ONE

The railways were even more used and abused in the Second World War than they had been in the First. This time the Big Four, together with London Transport, were taken under government control on 1 September 1939, two days before the outbreak of the war, and again they were run on behalf of the government by a Railway Executive Committee consisting of experienced railway managers.

Private cars, buses and lorries were now commonplace and many people had become accustomed to travelling by road. Now, almost overnight, the railways regained their position as a virtual monopoly. Petrol rationing was imposed to ensure that the meagre amounts of oil getting through the German blockades were reserved for military purposes, and it was left to the railways to cope with the influx of people and freight which had previously gone by road. Trains, of course, were run on home-produced coal but the number of passenger services was curtailed in anticipation of widespread bombing, putting added pressure on those that remained. Rationing through travel permits was briefly considered but reckoned to be impractical and instead the government settled for publicity posters featuring the famous slogan ‘Is your journey really necessary?' and the rather more prosaic and indeed confusing message ‘Give your seat to a shell'.
¹

This time, the railway lines and stations were one of the principal targets for enemy attack, and it was not a matter of a few airships or small aircraft dodging the barrage balloons as in the First World War. The Luftwaffe was out to destroy Britain's infrastructure and the
railways were effectively on the front line. Fortunately, the attacks did not start until the spring of 1940, by which time the railways had been able to make some preparations. Rather wisely, the Railway Executive installed itself in a disused Tube station, Down Street in Mayfair on the Piccadilly Line, a bunker which became the nerve-centre of the railways throughout the war, and the control offices which were vital in keeping the system running from central London were dispersed to less likely targets such as Woking, Gerrards Cross and Shenfield. This, too, was a canny decision since the main line stations where they had been housed previously were all later hit by bombs.

Coincidentally, as in 1914, the declaration of war stopped the unions from calling a strike. There had been industrial peace since the General Strike in 1926 but as traffic had been improving – though not shareholder dividends – the unions felt that it was time to put in a strong wage claim. Just as the storm clouds of war were gathering, ASLEF, ever more militant, announced that a strike would start on 26 August, but its leaders were talked out of it by Ernest Brown, the Minister of Labour, who intimated that the railways might be needed to take the children to safety. He was to be proved right within days but the unions nevertheless pursued their claim which was referred to a national tribunal. When it reported in October, the Commission gave some concessions to the workers by raising minimum wages to £2 7s in rural areas and £2 10s in London, although wage packets were already much fatter thanks to overtime, and in any case drivers received more than double that minimum. As the war inevitably brought inflation in its wake, the railway workers were again paid a war supplement which started at 4 shillings for men and 3 shillings for women, and rose throughout the war. There was a big wage differential between the sexes, with average wages in mid-1943 of £3 4s for women and £5 5s for men – because they did more overtime and were given all the supervisory posts – but for both sexes these were good wages compared with other industries.
²

The government did not repeat its mistake of allowing railwaymen to sign up indiscriminately. Railway employment was made a ‘reserved' occupation, which meant that requests to join the forces were considered individually. Nevertheless 60,000 railway workers joined the forces in
the course of the war, 3,500 of whom lost their lives, and a further 45,000 were released for other vital occupations. Interestingly, these totals include 4,000 women who, of course, were not allowed to go to the Front but did serve in various military capacities. As in the First World War, the administrative skills of railway managers were in great demand and large numbers were seconded to various government departments.

Women were recruited in large numbers to fill the gaps and this time there was no need for debate, although they still faced much of the same prejudice as in 1914. At the outbreak of the war, there had been only 25,000 women in the railway industry and this soared to over 105,000, representing just under a sixth of the total workforce of 650,000 by 1943. They performed a wide range of jobs, including guard and signal work, as well as portering and carriage-cleaning, but again there was a total ban on women working on the footplate. Supervisory and managerial jobs were also closed to them, and girls were not allowed to take up apprenticeships. There was a repeat of the discussion among the unions about whether women should receive equal pay: this time, in order to avoid concerns that employing them would lower wages, women performing jobs defined as male grades were generally paid 4s per week less for the first three months, and then the male rate. After the war, as before, most were forced out of their jobs but this time a higher proportion remained.

The railways had been something of a closed shop until now. Reg Robertson, who was a fireman in the war, explains how the railway had been a ‘family affair': ‘[Normally] to stand any chance of a job, you had to come from a family that already had the breadwinner working for the company.'
³
Applicants related to a railway worker might get in while total outsiders had their applications rejected. But times had changed, and in late 1940, Robertson answered an advertisement in the
Brentwood Gazette
for engine cleaners, the first rung on the ladder to becoming a fireman and then a driver.

As in 1914, the railways were called into immediate action and successfully carried out an enormous logistical task within days of the start of the conflict. This time it was the evacuation of children and others considered vulnerable from the cities in order to protect them
from the bombing that was thought to be imminent. Within a couple of weeks, 1.3 million people had been moved into the countryside on 3,800 special trains, half from London and the rest from major cities such as Liverpool, Newcastle and Glasgow. The meticulous planning, which included reducing congestion at London's main line termini by starting trains from suburban stations such as Watford and Wimbledon, paid off and there were remarkably few mishaps. Many of the children drifted back during the phoney war of the next nine months and a similar, though smaller, evacuation exercise had to be carried out again when the bombs actually started falling.

Troop trains were soon running, with the first part of the British Expeditionary Force being dispatched from the port of Glasgow, having travelled there on twenty-two special trains. Soon after, Southampton received over ten times that number of military traffic en route to France. Some of these trains were far longer than normal, with up to twenty-five coaches, and while that allowed many more passengers to be carried, these sluggish behemoths compounded congestion on the network.

Another crisis soon ensued. The retreat from Dunkirk required hundreds of trains to evacuate servicemen, some of them badly injured, away from the Channel ports. Fortunately, the trains carrying the escaping men, who had been strafed and machine-gunned as they had tried to get off the French beaches, were not attacked by the Germans as they left the British Channel ports, even though they would have been an easy target. Overall, nearly 300,000 Dunkirk survivors, many injured, were transported in just ten busy days straddling May and June 1940 in 620 special trains. Again, as in the First World War, the railways had passed their initial test with commendable efficiency. The GWR, ever with an eye to publicity, even produced a booklet,
Dunkirk and the Great Western
, publicizing its role in the rescue using both its trains and ships. In fact, it had been a remarkable cooperative effort from all the railways, which had supplied a total of 186 trains,
⁴
each ten coaches long and hauled by whatever locomotives were available.

For the public, however, travelling by train during the war was a grim and, at times, expensive experience. The Brighton trains which had previously been among the slowest expresses in the country, averaging just 52 mph, suddenly became the fastest as speeds were reduced on most
services around the network. All the lights were turned off in the crowded coaches so that enemy aircraft could not spot the trains, and until hooded lamps and efficient blinds could be installed passengers had to endure night travelling with just the barest glow of a faint blue lamp. Initially excursion and cheap day tickets were scrapped, though the latter were reinstated but only for off-peak times. Other fares remained the same throughout the war and the biggest problems were overcrowding and delays. Conditions on the LNER's East Coast line were particularly unpleasant due to the reduction in services and the fact that it attracted the most attacks, being the nearest railway to the German airfields: the trains were of ‘caravan length and often quite incredibly crowded with corridors jammed with men and women sleeping propped up in gangways and lavatories'.
⁵
The sheer volume of people weighed down the carriages on to their springs, giving a bumpy and uncomfortable ride.

The number of services was cut back on most lines, sometimes dramatically. On the Great Western, for example, there were just fourteen daily trains from London to Bristol, compared with twenty pre-war, and services between London and Glasgow on the LMS were halved from twelve to six daily. Of the remaining services, many did not run – by 1942 it was common for 200 trains per day to be cancelled, leaving thousands of people milling about at stations to be crammed into the next service. Moreover, people had to endure the awful conditions on the trains for far longer than before the war as the scheduled journey times went up by 50 per cent or more. Plymouth, with all trains now being routed via Bristol rather than the direct way, using the Berks & Hants line, took six and a half hours to reach from London, compared with a best time before the war of four hours, and Glasgow was a massive ten hours from the capital, a third longer.

Worse, even these extended scheduled times often bore little relationship to reality. Delays were inevitable as the extra services on the network, often carrying troops who were given priority, caused hold-ups on congested lines. There were plenty of other reasons why trains were late which were largely out of the railways' control. Materials and people to repair the track were in short supply, countless temporary speed restrictions which, in effect, became permanent were imposed because of the poor condition of the track, and the overlong
trains were not only slow but often required two stops at shorter stations to give passengers a chance to get on and off, causing yet more delay. Even reductions in the number of train services could, paradoxically, cause difficulties. On the Southern, the regular passage of trains ensured that the third rail did not ice up, and longer intervals meant a greater risk of breakdowns in freezing weather. All these changes to the timetable and disruptions had a very widespread knock-on effect, and there is much truth in the old railway adage that a timetable change in York can cause delay to a branch line service in Cornwall.

Most of the pleasures of railway travel soon became a distant memory. First class was abolished in 1941 to allow better use of available space and restaurant cars went the same way three years later. There was also the ever-present risk of being bombed or strafed by the Germans and the railway authorities had to work out how best to cope with an attack. At first, in the spring of 1940 when the Blitz began, they made the same mistake as in the First World War and issued an instruction that as soon as a warning of approaching enemy aircraft was announced, trains were to stop at the next station to allow any worried passengers to get off and then proceed at a mere 15 mph. Goods trains were supposed to slow down to a snail's pace of 10 mph. However, these rules caused the network to grind to a halt far too often, given that attacks were almost continuous in the south and on the east coast, and consequently the rules had to be relaxed if the railways were to function at all. Instead, trains were generally allowed to proceed at 30 mph but even at this speed severe dislocation and delay was caused to passengers. Both passengers and railway workers faced a variety of new hazards from the blackout conditions: platform edges were painted white but nevertheless many people fell on to the track and the death rate among the workforce soared because of the risks of working in the dark.