The BeerTrain

The Portsmouth to Cardiff services were due to finish in May 1988, I and many of the Crompton roadshow were spending an increasing number of days out "on the Bash", sometimes using Leave & sometimes just going Sick from work! With so many booked turns to cover and mileage to accumulate, very little time was spent eating or drinking - no breakfast, food on the go during the day from chippy's and then little or no time for Beer! Saturday 31st October Unfortunately the brickworks where I worked had started working on Saturday mornings due to demand, as the only person trained on my Brick stacking machine this meant I could no longer leap on Friday evening for the 2252 Waterloo - Weymouth (booked a 33) but could only make the 1410 Waterloo - Salisbury on Saturday afternoon. EMU  Sittingbourne - London Victoria 44m 40ch 33108 Waterloo - Salisbury 1L09 1410 Waterloo - Salisbury 83m 43ch 33064 Salisbury - Fareham 1O43 1415 Cardiff - Portsmouth Hbr 38m 43ch 33048 Fareham - Ba...

I was sat at home one evening, after work at the Smeed Dean Brickworks in Sittingbourne, watching ANOTHER re-run of an original Star Trek episode while my Mum got on with her ironing (I say her ironing as no-one else was going to do it!) when the house phone rang. "Hello it's Eric Tyler from Templecombe station, we've already got enough bookings for the Crompton Farewell train on October 22nd to more than half fill another train. What do you think?" What I immediately thought was how did he get my number, I don't work for the railway & my booking for the Farewell was as part of a block booking made by someone else?! Anyway my obvious reply was to suggest running a 2nd train the following Saturday - after all that's double mileage for all of us! "How can we guarantee that we don't get the same locos both weeks, or make it so people want to do a 2nd trip?" Eric & Gerald Daniels (Salisbury Area Manager) were  responsible for planning these t...