Two of these, âDoll and Gertrude, had worked together at Bilston steelworks, Wolverhampton, until 1959, and were then separated, to be reunited 50 years later at the Leighton Buzzard Railway 90th anniversary celebrations.
A Train Poem.
The train at Pershore station was waiting that Sunday night
Gas light on the platform, in my carriage electric light,
Gas light on frosty evergreens, electric on Empire wood,
The Victorian world and the present in a moment’s neighborhood.
There was no one about but a conscript who was saying good-bye to
his love
On the windy weedy platform with the sprinkled stars above
When sudden the waiting stillness shook with the ancient spells
Of an older world than all our worlds in the sound of the Pershore
bells.
They were ringing them down for Evensong in the lighted abbey near,
Sounds which had poured through apple boughs for seven centuries here.
With Guilt, Remorse, Eternity the void within me fills
And I thought of her left behind me in the Herefordshire hills.
I remembered her defenselessness as I made my heart a stone
Till she wove her self-protection round and left me on my own.
And plunged in a deep self pity I dreamed of another wife
And lusted for freckled faces and lived a separate life.
One word would have made her love me, one word would have made
her turn
But the word I never murmured and now I am left to burn.
Evesham, Oxford and London. The carriage is new and smart.
I am cushioned and soft and heated with a deadweight in my heart.
 poem by John Betjeman read out on Radio 4 this morning
First Loco.
“Doll” as purchased from Stewart and Lloyd’s Bilston.
Doll.
Purchased for two pounds each, Doll and Getrude are now working on pleasure railways. Max.
Kerr Stuart Loco.
Imperial Smelting Co. used reduced hieght Kerr Stuart Locos under their retorts. When they were due for the scrap heap I purchased two of them for preservation. Max.