GSWR 90 Overhaul

[Maitland]

Northroader: Please don't even to begin to think such a thing is funny. It's quite possible that the "mug" is wearing oily overalls, and perfectly possible that your smouldering waste is hot enough to ignite it. Result? Burning to death, or at best a painful recovery. Or, especially in the case of volunteers who might be as past it as I am, a breathing crisis. Or a volunteer leaving the group.

A prank went wrong last year in Swansea:  (sadly the original newspaper report is behind a paywall).

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/man-in-court-for-setting-fire-to-fellow-worker.302502/

Quote

A railway worker set a colleague's overalls on fire at the end of a shift causing widespread burns to the victim's body, a court has heard. The victim was left with burns to his face, chest, and stomach and spent more than a week in hospital. ....

Kyle Blackett's advocate told Swansea Crown Court that there had been no intent on the part of his client to cause injury in what he termed "industry-accepted horseplay".
 

No intention of being a killjoy, but that doesn't count as joy.

Edited Wednesday at 10:38 by Maitland
words left out

[Northroader]

 My apologies, I was thinking back to apprenticeship days in a main loco works, rather different from today’s scene.

[jhb171achill]

I'll risk wandering off topic here (not like me).....

Many moons ago, I interviewed a former driver now gone to his well-earned rest in the Great Locomotive in the Sky.

He started as a teenage cleaner (as they mostly all did) in 1917, and the allocation there at the time was six J15s. He remembered the numbers of them too, and what duties they tended to be on.

Probably in many sheds other than Tuam, tricks were played on new entrants. 

Billy's first job was cleaning locos on night shift for tomorrow's trains, after they'd been lit up. One would do the goods up to Sligo, and another would head to Athenry. On his first night they told him the shed was haunted by the ghost of a dead driver who had been a "fierce man". Billy got his bucket of oily rags and set about cleaning one of the engines. He was the only person in the shed - or so he thought. At fourteen years of age he was still very gullible (by his own admission). He was a country lad, brought up on a sheep farm out in the sticks outside the town.

But the WAS someone else in the shed, tiptoeing about. This "someone" moved his bucket while he was round the other side of the loco. When he came back to it, he assumed he had been mistaken in where he left it. But it was moved again. Now he began to get anxious. Next time he went back to his bucket it had disappeared/ Panic set in and he ran like blazes outside to where a steam raiser was preparing another engine. Steam raiser casually said, "ah, that's just Otto*, the ghost. Don't mind him. As long as you don't ANNOY him, you'll be fine!"

(*  Can't remember the actual name, but it was something odd like that)

He was terrified out of his wits. Next day he sought out the foreman and told him he wouldn't be back, and told him the story. Foreman exploded in a rage (not at Billy) and told him he'd better be back, and there was no such thing as ***** **** ****&*&*&*&*^&% GHOSTS................

He said he never found out who did this, but the same trick was played on someone else at another time......!

[jhb171achill]

On 8/6/2026 at 1:53 PM, Northroader said:

P.S. if you want a real laugh, set some cotton waste on fire, beat it out until it’s smouldering, then drop it into the tank filler after the mug who’s struggled into the tank.

A well-known former RPSI member was a ship's engineer on trawlers in his earlier working life. He was a notoriously argumentative type (when I was RPSI treasurer he rang me in one of his many drunken rages at 02:30 demanding a refund for expenses he claimed to have incurred!)....

Argumentative on North Sea trawlers, too. Can you imagine being cooped up with someone like that on a trawler on the North Sea for 2 weeks? Well, if that wasn't bad enough, he didn't get on with the skipper!

One day the skipper told him there was something rattling in his (very tiny) bunk room and he couldn't sleep, because the rattle was right overhead, maybe a foot away from his head when sleeping.

Our man found the issue, tightened it up, but at the same time put a marble inside a pipe which ran literally alongside his bunk. That was even noisier. They were several days from port. When the skipper complained that there was now a different noise, but it was louder, our man put a SECOND marble in the pipe. All day and all night they rattled back and forth in that pipe, while our man insisted he was absolutely puzzled as to what the cause was.....