Recollections of Ian Thomas

Transcribed from a recorded interview made by Allan Guy (2001)

[IT] "This would have been the autumn of 1964 and it was one of those typical autumn days when the fog was thick, we used to get more fog then than we do these days. I remember coming home from school, and I was living at Kingshill at the time, and I could hear the train coming up the valley and it was making a tremendous din. What was happening was, where the fog and the damp had got on the rails, the steam locomotive was working the heavy freight, and the wheels when they were hitting the damp rails were tending to spin and of course it started this real chain reaction and the only thing the driver could do to stop it was shut the accelerator and then try again and it must have taken, I would say, probably 30 or 40 minutes to get this train eventually moving up the Everlands and on over the Quag bridge and into Lister's. But that memory still sticks out well, back in the autumn of 1964."

[AG] "Wrong sort of....."

[IT] "Wrong sort of weather, that's right yes."