Memories of a Booking Clerk

I recently had the pleasure of going to talk to Richard Willacy, a convivial 88 year old who worked as a booking clerk in many of the line's stations and beyond from 1945 onwards.

We talked at length for nearly five hours on a whole host of subjects, including the railway, local history, national service, cricket, family, politics and more.

The following is an attempt to put our lengthy conversation into a relevant article.

As our discussions gave rise to a number of non-railway, but historically interesting anecdotes that drifted off topic slightly, these have been included with the option to read either the railway only or full version.

The words are Richard's, but some poetic licence has been applied in the questions and flow to ensure a coherent read.

Where possible, memories have been cross-referenced with links for further reading.

David Barton
Website Design, Membership No.572

Banner Photo: ©Copyright Dr Neil Clifton (Fleetwood Station / Ferry Terminus, Lancashire) - August, 1959

The Interview (Railway Only / Full Version)

So, how did you come to work on the railways?

Y'see we come from a railway family, my grandfather, he was the foreman of Poulton Goods Yard and they looked after me. My father died when I was 7 so they took me and my brother in and they lived at the cottage that was sideways on, 2 Station Road (Poulton). Railway Cottages they were called. Well, my Grandfather he had a gate onto the line there you see.

It's a railway town is Poulton.

My father, he died when he were 32, he was a railway plumber and he was in charge of all the area. He didn't go to Burn Naze though (laughs). So anywhere that had a leak, toilets, pipes frozen up or whatever.

And er, so that's why I was really railway.

When I first went to Fleetwood (Station) I found out that the ticket collector there, he knew my father, knew more about him than I did. Well, how he used to, y'know, these guards, they had these lamps, they just twisted 'em from red to green (motions flick of the wrist), he used to put a bit of solder on them with him being a plumber (laughs). Told me tales like that.

And you joined when you were 14, was that straight from school?

Yes. At that time, they were taking a lot of staff on. Juniors like we were sort of thing. I went up to the main station (Fleetwood). They were in charge of everywhere up to Burn Naze South signal box.

We had to go to Preston, Marsh Lane it was. A station master used to take us. He had a class full of youngsters.

I went there and then for my training I went to Wyre Dock Station (laughs). It was fishy and things I wasn't used to. Usually there was a big cod stuck in the wash basin that they'd got off one of their mates who'd come off the trawlers.

It was a separate place on the docks. It was still British Rail, but they had their own sidings and everything. And every day, they had these fish wagons loaded up during the day and they had what they called a fish train. 2:50, it always used to go from the dock down to Billingsgate at 2:50.

Wyre Dock Station stood at the southern end of Dock Street, about a quarter mile from Wyre Dock itself, with a branch line for freight to support the distribution of fish.

Fleetwood Docks were still home to a large deap sea fishing fleet at this time.

Billingsgate? That'd be a journey and a half that, under steam.

It was. I were interested in taking numbers of trains at that time, and of course I knew when it'd come from the engine sheds at Blackpool. I knew what time it was coming up to link up with Wyre Dock at two fifty and then at three o'clock, it rode through Burn Naze like the clappers, y'know.

I used to put a penny on the line.

Found in London, Billingsgate was and is the UK's largest inland fish market. It was relocated in 1982 to the Isle of Dogs in Poplar.

You joined just after the war, were there many women doing jobs on the railways?

Yes. There were. They used to be doing 'em during the war and they was still doing them.

I remember a guard, oh she'd a voice like a foghorn. She really had. She needed it, y'know, she was a guard. "Hurry along there!", y'know. Oh, she put the fear of God in 'em.

And the two porters at Wyre Dock. One was called Mrs Fish and the other one was called Francis. Mrs Fish had a husband who was a gasfitter for the whole region and he taught me how to play chess at Wyre Dock station.

As they had in WWI, Women in WWII stepped up to fill many roles within the railways and elsewhere where men had been called up or volunteered to fight.

You mentioned Burn Naze station just before.

After I'd trained for a while, they sent me down to Burn Naze booking office, which wasn't busy of course. There wasn't much to do. Learning and getting the atmosphere and doing the book-keeping.

Obviously, there was people from the village used to come and go into Fleetwood shopping or into Blackpool. There were no cars. Well, you were a long way at Burn Naze station to number 14 bus like.

I was bored stiff at Burn Naze. There was a bloke at Burn Naze North (signal box), I used to go up there, go and visit him. And the bloke in Burn Naze South (signal box), oh he was an old woman, well as far as cleaning was. Y'know anybody wouldn't bother, but you had to put your slippers on when you went in his signal box.

There were a goods office. They had three people in there that worked from there, for all the goods that left Burn Naze that came in. They had a clerk, an inspector and a checker.

Those three ran everything that came into the sidings for the chemics. Nothing to do with us. You'd never see them in the station.

One of two stations still remaining, Burn Naze Halt railway station was between Wyre Dock and Thornton for Cleveleys on the Preston and Wyre Joint Railway, the Fleetwoood branch line that the PWRS is working to restore.

There must've been a few people working at the plants who used the station?

Thousands. Oh yeah, the majority of them. Especially when the works finished and started, they were all getting off there.

Everyone who got off at Burn Naze Station was usually working at Hillhouse, Alkali or Burn Hall.

There were three chemics then.

They had a 4:55 train from Fleetwood Station. I were at Burn Naze booking office at the time and it was through to Manchester. It was a rather good train for a lot of people.

And one day, it was supposed to stop here (Burn Naze) to pick up a platform, a load of people, all the workers going home and it went right the way through. Went from Wyre Dock to Thornton. Must've been the driver. He didn't fancy stopping at Burn Naze.

Anyway, I don't know what happened. There was hells of bother.

There were no toilets and no water.

Fleetwood Salt Co. was founded in 1890 after the discovery of millions of tons of rock salt under the countryside Over Wyre. Later that year, it became part of United Alkali Company, employing the Leblanc process to produce soda ash for the glass, textile, soap and paper industries.

This then became Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) from 1926 onwards. In 1941, the war brought chlorine production to Thornton and saw ICI start to acquire the assets of Hillhouse and Burn Hall Works. In 1953, a power plant was built at Bourne Way to supply ICI with electricity and steam.

No toilets?

There weren't many women working at the chemics and of course anybody, any of the villagers there knew there were no toilet facilities so they'd go before they got to the station.

I had a visit from a chap from PWRS, he was suprised that there were no water at Burn Naze railway station. He said we've been looking where the water pipes are.

I said you can stop looking, there wasn't any.

Well, there was a wide big jug wi' a handle on, we used to put it on the train up to Fleetwood and they'd send it back. That's the only thing there was.

There was one toilet for the staff, a chemical one. Caught fire one day.

The Poulton & Wyre Railway Society (PWRS) was formed in 2006 to act as a catalyst to reopen the railway between Poulton and Fleetwood. Membership is open to all to help support the cause.

Did you do any other training off-site?

I had to go on the dock and learn how to do the telephone exchange, it were on the dock. There were one number, well, the enquiry office, parcels office, booking office, Wyre Dock.

That was just a job in itself. Unheard of now. Y'see not only had we the GPO, we had what they called the "bus" circuit, that was the internal line with buttons and each button had a code, station masters office was a long, a short and a long.

And then at other end, it'd ring everywhere. If that was their code though, they'd answer it. It was a dot and a long one for the parcels. Everyone had a code.

One of the things we had to learn between 14 and 18 was shorthand. 60 words a minute we had to learn.

I had to go once a week to a class in Poulton which all railway people did. I passed that all right.

Had to go to Hunts Bank at Manchester to get the exam. Came back and it was 1947 or something like that. There was probably about five us who hadn't a permanent position.

We were called "spare" so if there was any position that was required anywhere else, we were sent there for that day, week or whatever it was. So, consequently I've worked at Fleetwood, Wyre Dock, Burn Naze, Thornton, Poulton, Layton, Blackpool, Preston, Leyland, Chorley, Bolton, Manchester, I've worked 'em all.

Historically, a telephone exchange required telephone operators to manually connect calls with a pair of electrical cords on a telephone switchboard.

Established by Charles II, at this time, the General Post Office (GPO) was the UK's state postal system and telecommunications carrier. It became The Post Office in 1969 and the phones side was split away to become British Telecommunications (BT) in 1981, then subsequently privatised in 1984.

To simplify connections and remove the need for exchanges over long distances, the railways used a Bus Circuit system where the phone would ring at each location on the circuit and the code used would determine who should pick it up.

So, you'd go wherever you were needed?

Yes, that's it. I think it were about 1947, we used to have the Isle of Man boats coming to Fleetwood. The Isle of Man Steam Packet hadn't got clerks of their own and so, the Steam Packet used to borrow two of us from the station and during the summer season. One of the senior clerks and me a junior were working in the Isle of Man booking office for two seasons.

Remember there wasn't any cards as such, credit cards, debit cards or anything like that.

It were either cash or cheque. The senior bloke was on the right at one window. He did all the bookings for the cash and everything and I was on the other window. We had a lot of contractors who went every day some of them, and they showed us their pass and I gave them their ticket y'see.

And of course we could always get on the Isle of Man boat for nothing. Well, it cost us 2 and 6 saloon return. There were like steerage and saloon. Third class and first in them days.

The Isle of Man Steam Packet Company is the oldest continually operating passenger shipping company in the world. It operated a regular ferry service from Fleetwood for many years, which ceased in 1961 for a period of 10 years.

After training, you'd have been the right age for National Service then?

Aye. I did my National Service for two years from age 18 to 20 and you'd to go back one week a year for the next two years for a refresher.

We did our training at Farnborough and you know them big planes that'd just come out, they looked like one big wing, Vulcans, they were just in operation and doing their test flights over Farnborough.

And we did our training there, middle of winter, lying down shooting, blowing lines up.

And that lasted for about six weeks and then everybody went to the unit they'd been allocated.

National Service as peacetime conscription was formulated by the National Service Act 1948. From 1 January 1949, healthy males 17 to 21 years old (originally 18 to 41) were expected to serve in the armed forces for 18 months. This was quickly extended to two years in response to the Korean War in 1950. They would then remain on a reserve list for a number of years and could be called back to serve with their units for up to 20 days.

The Vulcan was a jet-powered tail-less delta wing high-altitude strategic bomber. It first flew in 1952 with numerous prototypes taking flight in the late 40s and early 50s.

And you ended up working on the railways?

Well, they wanted to know what you did. Y'know, railway clerk. A few of us were Royal Engineers and we went from Farnborough to Liss in Hampshire, Longmoor Military Railway.

It was a big concern. They had their own railway there, it went from Liss on the southern end, right through Longmoor to a place called Bordon. And they had monster trains, big ones as well as little ones, y'know, they had allsorts.

It wasn't like a trainset, it was a proper thing. They'd proper guards and drivers.

The Longmoor Military Railway (LMR) was a British military railway in Hampshire, built by the Royal Engineers from 1903 in order to train soldiers on railway construction and operations.

So what was the army doing with trains?

Well, during wartime of course they had their own. If there was another war, they'd have all the personnel to lay the lines, etc.. because they found out the railways were useful in other wars.

Actually, we weren't on the operating side. My job, as I said (recalling earlier conversation about playing cricket), the captain, he was also the cricket captain so he got me as his clerk in a brick building just on the outskirts of the camp. So I excused myself all marching and parades (laughs) and I was mainly making rosters out and things like that.

He was the operations superintendent and I was in the office next to him and above us was the signalling school. A layout, proper signalling, levers, that they used to train the signal staff.

We were movement control, we hadn't anything to do with the trains. We were inside, clerical staff. So it was our job to move like a regiment from one place to another with all their transport.

Oh aye, movement control, we had some night exercises that we had to go and plan things and then we were all taken down to Stansted Airport. We all sat in a plane, this is for our benefit like, this is what you'd do if you had to, y'know, this is a transport, so many seats, all gobble-de-gook. Awful.

And they took us down to Tilbury, looking at the ships and there were some Ben Line, they were big, they weren't passenger ships, they were cargo, y'know. We had the run of them.

The Ben Line was a Scottish shipping company based in Leith, Scotland founded in 1825 which was primarily involved in the Far East to Europe trade. It is still running today as Ben Line Agencies.

After service, did you return to work on the Fleetwood line?

Aye, as time progressed, after I'd done my National Service, there was a vacancy in the booking office at Fleetwood and I took it.

So, I must've been about 20 when I came out of the services and for about five years 'til I got married to a Fleetwood girl, I was cycling, getting up about four o'clock in the morning, cycling to Fleetwood (from Poulton), all sorts of weathers, to open the booking office, because the first train went at five forty and I had to open up.

They wouldn't do it now!

Y'see, there's more to it in a booking office and a parcels office than you'd think. Now, they'll just press a couple of buttons and they get a ticket. Well, they had cards.

Well, when you've got like I had at Fleetwood, I were in charge of ordering the cards, the tickets. And when you've got a couple of hundred of them, you can't run short of any or you're in trouble. So you've got to order them when you're down to three months stock and that were my job.

And then twice a year, I'd got to order stationery. You can imagine there's hundreds of different little pieces of paper. I had a book and I had to send it down to Wyre Dock Junction, the inspector there. I did Burn Naze myself.

Wyre Dock station, Fleetwood station, which included the parcels office, station master's office - they used a lot. And then after ordering all that lot, it came back in one of them big wicker baskets, I used to have to sort it out and then distribute it.

Each little scrap of paper, it started off they all had an ERO number, but during my time they changed them all to BR numbers, so that was an added puzzle. Because I used to order them with ERO numbers and they come back BR.

And so I thought this is not good enough, so I got a big like catalog book and I got every single item, stuck it in the book (with sellotape), there was hundreds of them, with the BR number written underneath. It took me a long time.

When the station closed, everybody wanted it. Pete Inskip at Poulton got it. He says "don't let anyone else have it, I want it" because they were in a tangle.

Built in 1883 opposite the north end of Queen's Terrace, the new Fleetwood Station replaced an earlier terminus in Dock Street. It was a grandiose glass-roofed station with two full length platforms into the building, two shorter platforms outside and a very long boat train platform along the seaboard side of the building.

Interesting thinking back not that long ago to a time before computers.

You had to know a thousand and one things. They'd be shocked if they knew what we had to learn.

Like enquiries. You had to be spot on. You hadn't to give 'em any wrong information. They might be catching a boat, a plane and you'd need to give them the right train, not one where they miss their connection at the other end. You'd spoil their holiday.

If somebody wanted a ticket, y'know a return ticket to somewhere that we hadn't got a price for, they were going say next week, we could get one.

We had our own telegraph system, y'know, and it'd come back and the wife always used to play hell with me for my small writing.

Well, if you got a ticket with how big them card tickets were. One was the outward half and the other was the return, and you were going to Ashby-de-la-Zouch or somewhere it was a hard job getting all that on.

You had to write the route down as well as the (destination) name. Ashby-de-la-Zouch via so and so, via so and so. Because if they were perhaps going to a station that had two or three routes they could get to it and they were all different prices.

That's why I have small writing and it's stuck with me ever since. When you've had 20 years doing that.

Phased out in the 1980s, Edmondson railway tickets were small pre-printed tickets with details printed or stamped on for common local journeys. For longer, less common journeys, tickets had limited space to write a full route, including changes and destination. Necessary in a country that had approximately 4,300 stations and 18,000 miles of railway pre-Beeching.

The tickets were just 1⁷/₃₂ by 2¹/₄ inches (31.0mm x 57.2 mm) in size.

What would be the reason for not knowing a price?

We had a lot of prices, but not them all of course, so we had to send a telegram off to don't know where it was now, Watford? From so and so to so and so. Fare of so and so. And they'd send it back with a price and we'd put it in this book.

If they wanted to travel that day, we'd book them as far as we could, if they were changing, shall we say at Crewe and they were going farther.

Telegrams were a means of sending short textual messages over long distances via electric telegraph wires using symbolic codes known to the recipient.

They'd have to find a booking office or conductor en-route for the onward journey?

Yes, that's right. In fact, I'd one woman, she used to go on the Canberra cruising. Every year and she came, she says, "Do you know, I'll only come to you to book this, none of the others, I always get in trouble with 'em when I'm travelling with the tickets I've got off them."

Because, it was a bit complicated. Sailing from Southampton and they have special boat trains from London, I think it were Victoria or Waterloo. And you could book them to Southampton, but not on the boat train, so you had to book them to London and look at a special charge to Southampton Dock. It went up to the docks to where the boat was.

Launched in 1960, the SS Canberra an ocean liner operating P&O cruises from 1961 to 1997. She was famously requisitioned as a troop transport during the 1982 Falklands War.

How many people do you think there were at Fleetwood?

Burn Haze, there were two porters, clerk probably went down for 2-3 hours, but the two porters were early and late, and there were that gap in the middle that the clerk covered.

And er, at Wyre Dock, there were two full time booking clerks and two full time staff. When I joined at that particular time (end of 1945, just after the war) there were women guards.

Fleetwood, there were dozens. In the Station Master's office, there was a Station Master, his clerk and another clerk and probably a junior in there. They had to do the pay sheets for 'em all.

In the booking office, there was probably two, early, late and a chief clerk who was a middle turn. In the parcels office, there were two and all the "spare" and of course, the cafe, cleaning, etc..

Parcels and porters are an interesting one as they don't exist anymore.

No, there were two parcel porters. Getting the parcels off the train, getting them into the parcels office. Nothing to do with the Royal Mail, this was Railway Parcel Service. It's non-existent now you see.

They had two delivery vans. All the parcels that came in, the parcels porter on the train from wherever, the parcel porter fetched them into the parcels office and the parcels clerk used to get behind a desk and we got sheets and he used to shout out who they were for and where they were going.

Everything was recorded. Oh, it was like, from Preston, ledger 1, the weight, the address, where they were for. A small van for the houses and a big van that did the shops.

Originally, it was LMS (London, Midland and Scottish) at that time. Y'know I started under LMS.

Originally set up to distribute newspapers, Railway Parcel Services were made available to the general public from the 1870s onwards and most railway companies had a service.

Historically, the Post Office had a monopoly on letters, but not parcel delivery, thus offering another source of income for railway companies.

Not to be confused with the later Red Star Parcels service which ran from 1963 to 1999, and for two further years under LYNX Express.

Under the Transport Act 1947, the London, Midland and Scottish (LMS) railway and other members of the Big Four railway companies (GWR, LNER and SR) were nationalised to become the state-owned British Railways (BR) in 1948.

That's a service that's completely gone now.

Well, you see, the reason for that, in the main, was the introduction of these (shows a photo of a Diesel Multiple Unit, DMU).

It used to be steam and it didn't affect anything that was carried in the goods van. Like fish, in the main. It was sending boxes of fish to somebody. Customers come in with what they called a "Bass of Fish", a couple of old fish in a bit of a sack.

They'd go into the parcels office, we'd put them on the scale, charge them up and then the parcel porters take them to the train to put them in the luggage compartment, the guards van.

But, some of the fish was wet and of course you get ice, melting ice and it went through the boards y'see. Well, on the steam train, there were nothing (underneath), but when these (DMUs) came in there were engines underneath.

They didn't want melted ice, and so it were all stopped, parcels were stopped. So, then if they come, these fish merchants come down and we said sorry we can't accept them.

A Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) is a single or multiple carriage (most often, passenger) train powered by on-board diesel engines with no separate locomotive, usually with driving controls at both ends.

After some experimentation in the 1930s by several railway companies, DMUs were revived and produced in large numbers in the 50s and 60s as part of British Rail's modernisation plan to move away from steam.

Was Fleetwood a busy station?

It was quiet during the winter, but it was a madhouse in summer. With the (Isle of Man) boats. They were like, the Wakes Weeks.

We had all the special trains coming in on the Saturday, and all the people that'd been on Wakes for the previous week coming this way and so we had 'em all mixed up (laughs). Oh, absolutely hectic.

There were thousands. There weren't planes to y'know, Costa Del Sol and everything. Just after the war, it was the place to be. A sail to the Isle of Man, y'know.

A foreign land with horse trams!

So, we used to have to go on the tannoy, when the boat came in at night. We used to close up the booking office, go into the station master's office.

"Number 4 platform for Preston, Leyland, Chorley, Bolton and Manchester", "Number 5 platform Blackpool only".

There were different places and as they were streaming off the boat we had to let them know which platform they wanted.

Originally a religious celebration, Wakes Weeks developed into an unpaid secular holiday in the industrialised North West and Midlands during the Industrial Revolution. Each locality nominated a wakes week during which the local mills, factories, collieries and other industries closed for a week, allowing for maintenance.

Flocking to seaside resorts, each Lancashire Mill Town took the holiday on a different week in the summer so that from June to September each town was on holiday a different week. Based on a play of the same name, the 1952 film version of Hindle Wakes is set during the Wakes Week for Hindle, a fictional Lancashire mill town.

All but gone now, the tradition suffered with the advent of paid holidays, a decline in manufacturing, the standardisation of school holidays, increased car ownership and the availability of affordable foreign travel.

Sister ships, the SS Mona's Queen, SS Mona's Isle and TSS Manxman all sailed from Fleetwood and had a capacity in excess of 2,000 passengers. Later car ferries such as the SS Ben-my-Chree and MV Mona's Queen carried less, but still had capacity for over 1,000.

What did you do for checking tickets with so many people?

Oh, they let through. The sooner we got rid the better.

And I always remember me stumbling over a word. It was one of the stations for East Lancashire, "Lud-den-denfoot", but everybody called it Ludden'foot. You missed the other "den", but I didn't know that.

Luddendenfoot Railway Station served the village of the same name in West Yorkshire, England, from 1840 until 1962.

Similar with Wesham. Everyone calls it Wesh-am, but the locals know it as Wes-ham.

I worked there for two years, at Kirkham Station. I used to sit there in the booking office, there were a big old fashioned fireplace that mice were playing in. We used to watch 'em playing.

And we used to have to go, while the RAF were at Weeton Camp, while there were still National Service and we used to take a rack full of tickets and cash and the books with the station prices y'know.

A three tonne lorry used to come from Weeton Camp, take us down to the NAAFI and we used to book anybody going home at weekend. There'd be a queue on, every Thursday it was. None of us liked going down there.

Established during WWI, Weeton Barracks (Camp) was home to RAF Weeton from 1940 to at least 1965.

Created by the government in 1920, the The Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI) is the company that runs clubs, bars, shops, supermarkets, launderettes, restaurants, cafes and other facilities on most British military bases, as well as canteens on board Royal Navy ships.

You mentioned Fleetwood was quieter in winter?

Yes. We ran a sweep during the winter and it was one of hell of a sweep an' all. It had, in them days, first, second, third, fourth division, central league, any other league, we had Scottish A, B C, D. A monster.

Well, we had guards, I think we had every railwayman this side of Preston and Blackpool coming in to the office. We hung the board in the ticket collector's office so everyone could see where they were up to.

And then they had tea cards in them days. Well, we had a system going there after it'd been running a bit. Anybody with any "twicers" send them into here and let us know what you want. We ran an exchange. We'd tea cards all over the office!

We had a dart board in the left luggage. It was alright during the winter months when there were nothing to do.

There were a booking clerk, he used to come up from Wyre Dock, he was on same shift as me, and in the top drawer, it was all drawers under the counter for keeping ticket stuff in, and we had a chess board in the top drawer in the middle. Nobody'd ever find it, y'know. And he used to come up in the winter time and we used to have a game of chess. Station Master came in one day just to check the books when it were quiet y'know. He said "Is it a good game?". He knew we were doing our job.

In fact, the auditors, we used to have the auditors come in and a lot of places they got in tangles with their book-keeping. They were at other stations, y'know, and they used to send them out and sort it out. They come to our place and he said "I'll tell you something now, we only come here when we want a rest. We know there's nothing wrong."

Similar in size to cigarette cards, a number of varieties of tea in the UK contained collectable illustrated tea cards in their packets from the 1940s to the 1980s.

When did you leave Fleetwood? After Beeching closed it?

Not when the main station went, I was one of them at Wyre Dock that became Fleetwood. When Fleetwood was closed and we moved the big station to Wyre Dock, they built a new station. New mess room at the side, polished floors.

They moved us all down on a Sunday. We knew the line between Wyre Dock and Fleetwood was closed, so we were obsolete, but we wanted all our tickets, because Wyre Dock hadn't any in comparison.

We had all these tickets, but they were still Fleetwood, Wyre Dock became Fleetwood. It was just a matter of altering the prices, because everywhere they were going, it was cheaper, tuppence cheaper. And we'd all that to alter.

I remember everybody, the last train out of Fleetwood there was going to be, I was on duty that night and there was dozens and dozens wanted a single to Wyre Dock (laughs). A single to Wyre Dock. Hell.

Anyway, the next day I saw a photograph in the paper with a guard waving his flag, y'know. Well, it was as dark as Hades, he used a lamp!

Fleetwood Station was demolished after closure in 1966 and a restaurant built on part of the site. In 1973, the remainder was developed into a container port facility, operating ro-ro service to Northern Ireland, which continued until January 2011, when Stena Line removed the Fleetwood to Larne route.

When the station closed, passenger services were relocated to the existing Wyre Dock station, approximately half a mile down the line. It was then renamed to "Fleetwood" station.

So it wasn't the actual journey in question?

No (laughs).

Were you involved when they were recording passenger numbers for Beeching?

Well I was, but not on Beeching's side (laughs). I was probably doing something illegal at the time. Well, the people that were objecting, they hadn't got enough information, so I might've just give 'em a bit.

They can't do anything to me now. I'm passed it!

With an increase in road traffic leading to a fall in railway use in the 50s and 60s, thus making many lines uneconomical to run, the Beeching Cuts were an attempt to streamline and restructure the railways in Great Britain, according to plans outlined in reports written by Dr Richard Beeching, Chairman of the British Railways Board from 1961 to 1965.

Controversial to this day, the cuts resulted in the closure of thousands of stations, miles of track and many branch lines which left communities isolated. They were unpopular with many of the railway using public, trade unions and the tens of thousands of railway workers who subsequently lost their jobs.

Probably should've added some extra on. They closed it anyway, and of course Blackpool Central too.

Well, there again y'see the station master from Fleetwood, his next step of promotion was Blackpool Central. At the time, that were a top job.

Blackpool Central was the bees knees, being station master.

Big car park now!

With 14 platforms, Blackpool Central was at one time, one of Britain's busiest stations with millions of holiday makers flocking to the seaside annually.

It was closed in 1964, against the recommendation of Beeching, who had proposed Blackpool North be closed instead. Blackpool Corporation had successfully lobbied British Railways for Central to be closed, in order that it might buy the land for potentially lucrative redevelopment.

What did you do after Fleetwood then, when Fleetwood went completely?

Well they wanted us to go into Blackpool (North), so with 20 odd years cycling from Poulton, I'd just got married shortly before it all closed and I said oh, I can't do that.

So I got all my superann back and redundancy.

And the rest is history...