“One day I looked up and saw the flying bomb within inches of our cab. We ducked and just carried on. We had a trainload of passengers to get to safety. It was all in a day’s work…”
These are the words of loco fireman Reg Farrow, one of the last in a dwindling band of folk who are witnesses to the story of “the lines behind the lines” as Britain’s railways were known during WW2. Now all in their late eighties and nineties, with their long lives nearing an end, more than a hundred of these heroic people recently recounted their memories to me. It proved to be an astonishing tale of how crucial Britain’s railways were in defeating the Nazis in World War 2.
There was no greater testimony than that of the great war leader Winston Churchill himself, who said that without the railways Britain could not have won the greatest conflict the world has ever known. Dubbed “the fourth arm of the services” the trains were the lifeline of the nation. Without them, there would have been no evacuation of innocent children from the Blitz and hundreds of thousands of troops sent into battle. There would certainly have been no Dunkirk evacuation and no D-Day.
As the bombs rained down, brave train crews moved the coal for the nation’s furnaces as coastal trawlers came under enemy fire. The railway workshops built Spitfires, Lancasters, tanks, bombs and guns. Even when the trains were not running, the London Tube saved thousands of lives, sheltering vulnerable London families who huddled on platforms as bombs shattered their streets above.
One of the most astonishing episodes was the evacuation of nearly threequarters of a million schoolchildren from the cities as war began. More than a thousand trains were mustered at short notice for an evacuation to safety that was described as “greater than that of Moses”. There were pitiful scenes as tiny, tearful ones were parted from their parents, often with a label round their necks and clutching a few treasured possessions, to head off into the unknown. Yet the operation was a triumph, with not a single casualty or lost child.
Meanwhile, travel conditions for the general public were grim. The blackout meant that station platforms had to remain in darkness, train blinds had to be drawn and dim 15-watt bulbs the only illumination in carriages. One passenger remarked: “You could have been sitting next to Dracula, but not known he was there”! Restaurant cars were withdrawn, passenger trains were crowded, slow and often late because priority had to be given to troop and munitions trains. Conditions were especially bad on the two main lines to the north along the east and west coasts. Sometimes the troops did better than the travelling public, with a free buffet on Preston station handing out 12 million cups of tea to service personnel. Meanwhile, many travellers were injured, not by the enemy, but by falling out of trains as they missed station signs in the darkness. Tragically, the trains themselves occasionally plunged into craters left by bombs.
But there was better news for some. With their men away at war, an army of women rose to the challenge of keeping the nation moving – cleaning the engines, selling the tickets, acting as guards on the trains and even working as welders to repair the damaged tracks. There was no effort more magnificent than that of the ladies from the Women’s Voluntary Service, who worked round the clock at wayside stations to feed and console the tens of thousands of weary troops who were brought home on a vast convoy of trains from Dover during the Dunkirk evacuation of June 1940.
The Blitz, a few months later, brought out the true mettle of the railway Brits. No one could have been braver than the crew of the Britain’s most famous train, the Flying Scotsman train, when it was attacked in November 1941. They were speeding north when they saw two planes approach out of the sea mist. The enginemen assumed them to be friendly, but suddenly machine gun fire burst from the sky. No passenger was injured. But when the fireman looked down he saw a bullet had run down through his arm and emerged from his wrist. Heroically and in great pain, he continued to stoke all the way to Edinburgh.
One of the greatest sources of cheer was Winston Churchill himself, who travelled everywhere in his own private train – a hotel on wheels, complete with cooks, waitresses and secretaries. “Everyone is glad when Mr Churchill travels. He talks to everybody and knows all his train staff by name and probably how many children they have got and where they live,” one of his entourage said. “He’s always cracking a joke with people.” Once, as his train came to a halt, a signalman was heard through an open window jesting that the Prime Minister was getting better grub “than the likes of us”. Winston promptly sent his uniformed butler along the track with a delicious meal on a silver tray.
When war ended, Churchill paid eloquent tribute to the fighting folk of the railways: “Results such as the railways have achieved are only won by blood and sweat,” he declared. “I express gratitude to every railwayman [and woman].” With the 70th anniversary of D-Day approaching next June [2014] let’s make sure such an uplifting story is never forgotten.
‘Steaming to Victory: How Britain’s railways won the war’ by Michael Williams will be published in March 2014 by Arrow Books, a division of Penguin Random House.
