Severn and Wye, Severn Bridge railway staff (General)

by peteressex , Wednesday, November 11, 2009, 08:04 (5565 days ago) @ Strok

Do correspondents in this thread know if the Severn & Wye ever had a category known as "volunteers", or has any of you heard of my grandfather in connection with the line or at all?

My grandfather, William Frank Essex, b. 1887, did a runner from home in Cheltenham for reasons I can't quite begin to describe, probably in about 1900. He pitched up in Lydney and eventually married a Sterrey (1913.) He got a job on the railway and at some stage was working at Bullo Pill. In 1912 he joined the Metropolitan Police, when his entry record gives his "previous occupation" as "Storekeeper" and his "previous public service" as "S/W Joint Rby Volunteer." Suspecting this to mean "Severn and Wye Joint Railway", I wondered in what capacity he might have been a volunteer on the line, but so far nobody has solved it.

After his death in 1961, since he had campaigned in his lifetime for the pedestrian wicket to be restored at the level crossing at Lydney Town station, the wicket was indeed restored, and bore a plaque declaring them to be the "Essex Gates." The wicket and the plaque however vanished after the line had closed to regular traffic.

So far as concerns Severn Bridge staff, my guess is that it was a close-knit community. I say this partly because when I was a child I was taken unwillingly by my father for a walk out of Lydney, and he decreed we should go back to Lydney Town on a train from Severn Bridge station. I guess this was in the early 1950s. The signalman at Severn Bridge got pretty excited at the idea that he'd actually got passengers on the scene, and insisted on changing his cap in order to sell us the tickets while correctly dressed.