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(Shush, Neighbours sleeping) Its 5-45 am, early morning! I have been allocated as fireman on the many southern branch-lines of the time! A Quarryman singer wonders what to call the new group they are forming? I climb on-board my steam engine for the day, An M7 or Ivatt 2Mt or the standard 82 3Mt sort with very little steam! The fires been blacked out all night! Its another 1/2 hour before my driver turns up! Many close by neighbours are still fast asleep! So i gently withdraw the long shafted Dart from my irons and with a little blower assistance from the smokebox i ease the coals from under the fire door with the tell tale hint or hue of brown vapour that i coax to a flame! I must crack the cocks on a half turn of a wheel to expend any water from the cylinder chests! To run to the water column at one mile an hour! The cocks squirt with little noise and no sleeping Zs are disturbed from the nearby terraced houses! Oliver Bulleid mechanical engineer of the Southern, Retired to live in a little town called Exmouth, On the south coast? I often wonder if i ferried him and his wife (Youngest daughter of Henry Ivatt) on one of my trains? Maybe at Exeter Central i might of been leaning out the cab window of Sidmouth, Exmouth, Exeter or Ottery St Mary Westcountry Bulleids (that would swan about between Exmth jct and Nine Elms)! and maybe give me a nod or a good morning? Like people did back then? I shall never know? He moved to Malta in the late 60s! Where he died in 1970! He’s buried near here now though! I wouldn’t of recognised him or his wife any more than i would of John Lennon who dreamed up the name of Beatles! Good job i didn’t wake him up from his dreams those early mornings either? ‘Shush zzz’
TaylPSteam, David Spencer and Mike Ashworth1 Comment-
I have fired and driven an 2MR nice engine and easy to drive
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