Early Railway Memories

Further Info

Funded by Bristol City Council. Watershed has created a new Bristol Stories theme to focus on the area now designated as the Bristol Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone.

The theme engages businesses, residents, and people travelling through Temple Meads and the surrounding neighbourhoods in projects that deliver creative digital representation of the area to ‘animate’ the heritage and personal experience of the area.

As part of this project Watershed worked with Knowle West Media Centre to deliver digital storytelling workshops with a group of ex-railway workers and ex-railway workers widows who lived and worked on the railways in Bristol.

This project was funded by Bristol City Council and delivered by Watershed and Knowle West Media Centre in collaboration with bigger house film

Transcript

Hello my name is Sandra and this is my film.

I have to admit I have no modern day connections with the railway.

This is my father Donald from Landrake in Cornwall. Plus Fours, very fashionable man my Dad in those days apparently. My mother was Phyllis from Millbrook in Cornwall.

This would be at the time I would assume of her engagement. I never realised she looked as young as that (laughs). Well it was my mother’s photograph taken I think in the village where we came from, Millbrook. The closest town I Plymouth.

They got married in 1938 after being engaged for 2 years. Before their marriage Donald was an apprentice boat builder. My Dad is the first one on the left. After his apprenticeship he was transferred to Devon Port Dockyard where he became a fully fledged boat builder and carried on through the early years of the war.

During the war my Dad travelled around many docks, inspecting ships and ended in Liverpool. My mother visited him on many occasions by train. During the wartime the trains were very busy, especially with troops, but because she was expecting me she was able to get a seat.

Although my parents were Cornish I was actually born in Liverpool. I’m very fond of that photograph, that’s how I remember my Dad because he died a couple of years after that.

This is my cousin Raymond. What I remember of him really is taking me trainspotting and he didn’t want to do it. Taking girls?! (laughs) Bloomin’ mates, that’s what he called me.

Yes, he had a book with all the numbers of the trains in and he had to cross off all the numbers of the trains he saw. Yeah, the next train experience was in 56/57 when I was going to Grammar school. During the bad weather the coaches couldn’t get out of the village of Millbrook because the hills were too steep. Luckily the tide was high so the ferries could come up and once we got to Plymouth we had to walk to Devon Port Station where we crossed back into Cornwall to Saltash via Brunel’s Railway Bridge.

Credits