A Story.... Horbury and Ossett Station.

[healeymills.com]

I received this email from Ken Brewerton about his HM experience back in the 70's.

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I had a nasty row with my bosses at a road parcel firm called Hansons in 1970 and drove off to cool down, i called in at the mill as we knew itand got myself a job as an oiler and greaser. i never kept my notebooks and was not into photography at the time but wondered if you might be interested in what i remember.

Although workinfg from HM we were outbased at the old Horbury and Ossett station. Our messroom where we spent most of our time was the old station masters office and although we had access to all the buildings on the station including the old booking office my rooting around proved fruitless. we used to spend hours playing dominoes and cards with a big open fire going and my seat was positioned so i could get numners at both sides of the island platform.i remember it was usually very busy and jotting a hell of a lot down, in fact i believe at one stage i had seen over 2 hundred 47 and at least a hundred 40s pass by.

i wish i had kept my logs because as you can! tell i even kept a note of the differing locos passing there as well adding them to my own seen collection. the reason we were based down there was at the time there were still sidings there enough to accommodate a rake of around 40 16 ton mins although we quite often got hoppers.

they qwerwe all usually empty but we could usually ristle up enough coal for our fire from lineside spillage and leftovers in wagons. it was our job to check the bearings oil, sometimes having to drop the boxes and change the pads, but that wasnot often necessary unless some came down from tmill carded for doing. we were unlucky if the rake was changed more than once in a week hence all the spare time waiting for next work. Hope some of this was of interest but honestly doubt it but have enjoyed recounting it.

I had umpteen different jobs on the railways when they were still joined up and its suprising the places that your priv ticket ID could get you in to.
bye for now Ken