The Railway Curiosity Shop of Wonder in John Street, Stroud
Alec is always busy in his shop,
Mending clocks and repairing engines,
Walking past trucks and carriages and bottles and level crossings –
But when sunlight flashed through the rainswept window,
Alec, like Dickens, performing his characters,
Stopped to entertain me with his memories:
‘I started work in the hot summer of ’76. My mum, who worked in the canteen in Swindon Works, making cakes for the drivers, wanted me to get a job. Mum was forever dashing out to take in the washing in the old days of steam as our house in Brimscombe backed down to the line. Anyway, the foreman at the NCB at Stonehouse knew my brother, and he asked: “Can you start tomorrow?”
I clocked on at 7 for a 40 hour-week; 7-4.30 with an hour for dinner and a 15-minute break in the morning and in the afternoon. A good wage of £54 a week. I loved driving that 0-4-0 diesel shunter, “Dougal” (formerly, “Mr Useful”), built in 1945. Up and down the line used by the Dudbridge Donkey, up there near Oldends Lane, and the two sidings at the top where I dropped the coal. 12 hoppers, 12 different types of fuel, the dirty old conveyor belt, the diesel fuel tank.
I loved driving that train: 3 gears on the diesel, with dual controls so you could drive on either side. Kids used to gather on Silver Bridge and shout, “Hello Mr Dougal” and I used to give them a blast of steam back. They loved that.
I even had a visit from a Vintage Preservation Society. I think we must have had 10 in the cab and 4 hanging on the sides. They wouldn’t allow it now but there wasn’t the Health and Safety back then.
When they knocked down Stonehouse Station, they took the remains down to the Ocean and buried down below the waters. All those signs like ‘Ticket Office, ‘Waiting Room’, ‘Ladies’, ‘Gents’, down there in the Ocean by St Cyr’s on the canal. If only I knew then what I know now …
I was made redundant in 1986 when Mrs Thatcher closed down the mines. I was offered a job on B.R. to train as a driver but fancied a change. It wasn’t until 2002 that I took over this shop. But I remembered the money there was in coal and the money I made as a kid digging for bottles with marbles. ‘Where there was dirt, there was money.’ I used to dig at Stroud Tip. It’s quite spooky when you unearth a severed Victorian porcelain doll’s head, I can tell you, when you’re looking for bottles.’
The publican from the Ale House came in,
With some finds and discoveries for Alec,
A number of clocks collectively chimed the hour,
A customer entered so I gazed around from my chair:
At lengths of railway track and signal boxes and points and levers,
And locomotives and carriages and trucks,
So much of which had been painstakingly repaired
By Alec behind the counter with file
And blow lamp and new springs and ingenuity.
He creates life and vitality from old clockwork,
And life and vitality from his memory too:
‘Down in John Street, early in the morning,
See the little engines all in a row,
Alec with his green flag, Blows upon his whistle,
Peep, peep, peep And away they go.’
‘