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Nunnery Carriage Sidings


History dude

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I'm interested in anything to do with the former Nunnery Carriage Sidings. Memories of working there. The people. How things operated. There's not many track plans of the area, so information on that would be of great value. Photos are few and far between. Those that I have seen show it only at a distance. 

I myself worked for a very short time there during 1977 on a Work Experience Scheme with BR.

I remember there were a 1000 women employed and a handful of men. I was working with one of the men filling up the toilet tank on the carriages. The sidings had concrete walkways so you could get up to the carriage steps. There were water stand pipes at different places. And we would connect a hose to a stand pipe, and the other end to a pipe you could find on the back of the carriage. Turn on the tap and when the tank was fill it overflowed from the roof, so you turned it off. The toilet would then flush. It wasn't a pleasant place to work as the toilets would flush with onto the tracks. Of course with excrement, which couldn't be flushed away as the tank was empty, when the carriage was in use. 

Mark 1 carriage showing hose connection

The football specials were the worse to clean. Sometimes windows were broken. The women cleaned both the outside and inside. The outside with long brushes and hose pipes.

When cleaned one of my jobs was to go down the train with those small bars of soap and Izal toilet rolls and make certain there was enough in every toilet.

The staff were really friendly and we had to laughs. One class 45 came in with a large turkey stuck to it's front! I don't know what happened to it. Or if anyone took it home to cook!  

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 From memory these sidings served the Eastern Region Victoria station. I first came into contact with them following the demise of much of the electrified Woodhead line. At the time, I was working for Geo Cohen Sons and Co.Ltd and we had been asked to tender for the removal of the catenary uprights. Being of galvanised steel ( zinc is a "tramp" element in steel making and is deleterious to the quality ) we offered a very low price....We didn't get the contract but some unsuspecting steelworks would, inevitably, have received "mixed" scrap metal where the poor stuff was "disguised" under the "pukka" gear!!!!😄

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Well, that's certainly a heavyweight 1-Co Co-1 class 45/46 "Peak" diesel electric...a very common performer through the Midland station and the catenary masts are clear enough aren't they? Thanks for the memories!😄

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