Laira Fireman : Footplate Recollections of a GWR Fireman

The sound of a steam locomotive hauling a regular passenger or freight train was once commonplace but alas, is now only a fond memory. We all have, I suspect, some favourite memory from that by-gone age, and mine of course are of the Great Western, when express passenger trains were blessed with names to conjure up the imagination. Millions of holiday-makers made their way to the resorts of South Devon and Cornwall; the Cornish Riviera Express, known to all who worked her as ‘The Limited’ because at one time her load was limited to a specific number of coaches and the Torbay Express along with the Cornishman, the Flying Dutchman and others were almost household names well, in some households. Memories were interlaced with the railway, woven into our everyday life; going on holiday or even on honeymoon, travelling to school or just train spotting, all linger in the mind as a picture, from those halcyon days. For me, an unforgettable highlight would be a King or Castle thundering up the fearsome 1 in 41 gradient of Hemerdon Bank east of Plympton, with the exhaust echoing through the trees and rolling across the countryside. For the residents of my adopted home town of Saltash it might of course, be something altogether more homely, the ‘Saltash Motor’, ‘the Flier’, as it was known, simmering away in the station, four coaches on, filled to overflowing with supporters on an Argyle Saturday as it waited patiently for a path back over the Royal Albert Bridge.