On the 31^st March 2003 I went to Peter Bassett’s Retirement Party in the Royal George, Borough (Room 84 Show members may like to know that this is the only Harveys Tied House in London !!). Peter was in the South Eastern Special Traffic Section at Beckenham during Room 84’s heyday and seeing him reminded me of the time that he and Ted Copus (Mr Belch) played an April Fool Trick on a rather snooty but naïve Management Trainee.

Management Trainees were allocated to various offices for fortnightly spells and Room 84 saw it’s fair share of them. What they made of the Room 84 Show has always been a source of wonderment because we rarely saw them again. One exception was Bert Blissett (Dirtie Bertie) who fitted into the regime as if he’d been there all his life. Anyway I digress, back to the story.

Peter was at the time a native of Wadhurst on the Hastings Line and one of his talking points always revolved around the treacle mines at Frant and the freight movements of the treacle around the country. Needless to say he was the South Eastern Special Traffic’s Freight Clerk at the time. Because of the Management Trainee’s “nose in the air” attitude Peter & Mr Belch organised a “Treacle” Special from Frant to South Wales via Tonbridge, Redhill & Reading. Mr Belch went out of the office to the Freight Section next door to phone Peter to say it was time to make the call. The phone rang on Mr Belch’s desk and Peter handed his “Treacle Train” over to the Management Trainee for the Central Division to pick it up at Tonbridge. Mr Belch told the Management Trainee that it would be good practice for him to time the train and hand it over to the Western Region at Reading Spur.

The Trainee was really intrigued about the Treacle Mines as he had never heard of Treacle Mining before. He even asked how it was got out of the ground and Mr Belch explained that it was a bit like extracting oil. A drill was put deep into the ground and gas pressure raised the liquid treacle up to the surface where it was refined and put into tank wagons for onward shipment by rail. Intrigued even further the Trainee asked how the treacle got there in the first place. Mr Belch told him that millions of years ago sugar beet was grown in the Frant area and this got pressed into the ground and eventually fossilised. There it stayed until a prospector started drilling in the area and “Eureka” struck Treacle and made his fortune. How the rest of us kept a straight face while this was going on I don’t know !!

The trainee duly timed the train and phoned the Western Region to hand the train over at Reading Spur. There was a pause on the phone and the Trainee went absolutely scarlet red in the face as the Western Region Freight Clerk obviously told him what day it was !!

One morning in the late seventies Harold Hobden, Station Manager Haywards Heath reported there was no unit available for the 08 35 Haywards Heath to Seaford as the Driver had put the key on the unit but it was dead. It was important that this train ran as it conveyed school children to Lewes and formed the hourly interval service from Seaford.

Instantly, without checking, I advised the Area 2 Controller (Ken Godfrey) to detach 4 cars from the rear of the
07 22 Ore to London Bridge and Harold got the crew in position at Haywards Heath. George Farmer the Signalman at Keymer was contacted and stopped the train on the home signal at the box and advised the driver of the plan and requested the Guard advise the passengers.

I then went cold as I realised the Buffet Car was rear and not centre in the 12 car formation. The plan was too far advanced to make any changes. Harold at Haywards Heath then reported 07 22 Ore 6 minutes delay and 08 35 to Seaford 18 late start and formed of Buffet set.

I explained I had made a mistake and what about the passengers in the Buffet Car ?
He said that they all ran up the platform carrying their breakfasts.

I thought that will be front page of the Evening Argus but never heard a thing. All the staff must have done good job putting right my mistake. The 08 35 Haywards Heath to Seaford & 09 44 Seaford to Brighton had a staffed Buffet.

This is the story of how I (the Gargoyle) brought my then home town of Reigate to a standstill !!

In the early 1970’s 4 VEP units were very new and a lot were built to replace the 4 LAV’s, 2 BIL’s and 2 HAL’s on the Central Division. Obviously these old units were sent for scrapping and sadly neither a 4 LAV known as "ThunderJug’s" nor a 2 HAL were saved for preservation. Thankfully the National Railway Museum did save a 2 BIL unit.

One of the main problems when the units were withdrawn was finding somewhere to store them whilst waiting for the sale to the scrap yard. Two of the favourite places for storing them were Polegate Engineer’s siding and the back road on the down side at Reigate. When the units went for scrap they were classified as ballast trains and usually had an engineer’s brake van at either end of them even though their brakes were still fully functional. By classifying them as ballast trains it was possible to vastly increase the length of the train. In passenger service the maximum number of coaches never exceeded 12 but when they became ballast trains the number of SLU’s (Standard Length Unit) allowed 16 coaches to be conveyed at any one time on most lines.

  Sometime during a 1970’s Summer when I was the Ballast Assistant I was asked to time a couple trains consisting of 4 x 2 BIL/2 HAL one from Polegate the other from Reigate both going to Newport in South Wales where they were all to be broken up in Cashmore’s Scrap Yard. Because it was difficult to get guards I decided to run both lots of units as one train on a Saturday morning starting from Polegate and picking up the other 8 coaches en-route at Reigate. I duly timed the train with 10 minutes for the attachment at Reigate.

Once the timings were published it suddenly occurred to me that whilst the train was attaching at Reigate it would actually straddle the level crossing thus closing the busy A217 for a whole 10 minutes. In those days Reigate did not have it’s one-way system and in the Summer months the town centre was always jammed with cars trying to get to Brighton at the weekend. The thought of starting another traffic jam up Reigate Hill while the level crossing was shut to road users caused a real buzz!!

Come the day I decided I walk up to Reigate Station to watch the fun!! I stood in my favourite place on the footbridge to await my ballast train. Right on cue it came into the station 5 minutes after the “Tadpole” had departed and went across the level crossing. It didn’t take long for the queue of cars to grow to such an extent that you couldn’t see the end of it. The Polegate portion shunted onto the stock in the back road. There it stayed for the next 25 minutes whilst the train crew were scratching their heads and running to and fro the Signal Box. Obviously I could not work out what was going on but was having a good chuckle at the gi-normous traffic jam that I had caused up Reigate Hill!!

Eventually the train departed from Reigate but without the bit that was stabled in the back road at Reigate. When the traffic got moving again only a couple of minutes passed before a Tadpole came the other way to cause yet another closure of the level crossing to road traffic !! After watching the cars for another 5 minutes I walked into the town centre and found it in it’s usual state of chaos, this time made worse because of my ballast train !!

On arriving at my desk on the Monday morning I found that my efforts at Reigate had made the DR (Daily Report) because they could not release the brakes on the 8 coaches stabled at Reigate. The Control had also received a strong complaint from Surrey Police, because, as a result of my efforts Reigate was snarled  up with road traffic for the rest of that day. They even followed this up with a written complaint to the Passenger General Section !!

All in all the day I “closed” Reigate is one I will never forget !!

As we all know the Room 84 Show was very much a Work Hard, Play Hard Office. However there was one cushy job in the section and this was the Freight job, which at the time was being done by Ted Copus (Mr Belch). The main reason why it was cushy was the lack of freight guards that were on the books and the fact that ballast trains were given priority.

However one of the big things in Winter was what was known as the Oil Programme and Mr Belch always got into a panic about this in case he couldn’t find a cutting to use on the Special Notice. This led to an office ritual every Thursday when Trevor Lloyd (the Dog) would start chanting “Oil Programme Panic Panic , Oil Programme Panic Panic………………..”

This I feel was one of the funniest things that happened in my time in Room 84.

The ultimate punishment in Room 84 was mounting. This I believe was started by John Lacy (the DBM). For really serious “offences” you went up a scale that consisted of double mounting, triple mounting and the occasional multi-deck mounting.

One day Stuart Burrell (the Pig) had obviously done something pretty serious and a multi-deck mounting on him took place. Unfortunately (or fortunately you might say !!) the Pig’s desk was next to the partition that separated the Room 84 Show from WAB’s office. As was often the case with multi-deck mountings the heap of people involved collapsed and they collapsed against the partition next to WAB’s office. All of a sudden we heard an almighty crash in WAB’s office and everyone quickly dispersed back to their desks. Seconds later the door burst open and in stormed a furious WAB who demanded to know what was going on. Uncle Fred (Stevens) said something like “Nothing, why??” WAB then informed us that the bookcase that was located next to the partition had fallen over in his office and spread it’s contents around the floor and he wanted an explanation as to why!!

We all know about Maurice Turner’s (Mum) opinion of the Germans and how the Room 84 Show loved to wind him up about it.

Many moons ago a film called “Zeppelin” hit the cinema screens and one Saturday Ian King (Kong), Dave Edwards (Stunted) and myself (Borneo) went to watch it in Brighton. The cinema foyer was festooned with Zeppelin decorations including some cardboard cut out models attached to bits of string. Stunted decided that it would be a good idea if we “borrowed” one of these models for the Room 84 Show. This he duly did !!

Come the following Monday Stunted handed the model to me and I proceeded to climb onto Mum’s desk to tie it to the light fitting above. Unfortunately whilst I was doing this Mum arrived for work and caught me red handed in the middle of the operation. He wasn’t too pleased with me and the Zeppelin soon disappeared into the wilderness!!

Derek Van Ryne (the Gargoyle) had this peculiar habit of smacking his fist into his other hand and kicking the sides of desks as he walked past them.

On one particular Friday Sue Puttock a friend of mine visited the Room 84 Show to accompany some of us on a night out in London. I introduced Sue to the various members of the Room 84 Show including the Gargoyle. I asked the Gargoyle to demonstrate his peculiar habit to Sue. This he duly did on the spare ballast desk. What the Gargoyle didn’t know (and neither did anyone else for that matter !!) was the fact that one of the legs wasn’t actually connected to the rest of the table !! Needless to say the Gargoyle chose this leg to kick with the result that the desk collapsed into bits onto the floor with a very loud bang causing great mirth to all those present.

I can remember the occasion when the handle of the door into Room 84 got broken and needed to be replaced. A temporary arrangement was put in place until it could be fixed. This temporary arrangement consisted of a pair of old tights wrapped around the door handle to ensure that the door remained closed.

In those days even simple repairs took a long time to do and when coming into the office we all got into the habit of putting our shoulder against the door to open it instead of using the door handle. Eventually the new door handle was fitted.  

No one knows why the trousers suddenly made an appearance but it could have been because it was the Goodge's round and his wallet was in one of the pockets!!

I cannot remember what the result of the Form 1 hearing was but the Operating Officer was eventually exported to the Eastern Region and life in Essex House returned to normality.   Ray no doubt forgot about the Operating Officer but the poodle certainly did not !!

One lunchtime the Room 84 Show were holding court to celebrate someone's birthday when Rodney Hunt (the Goodge) lifted his glass to take a sup of beer.   At the moment he did this he sneezed very forcibly right into the glass.   The beer then went down one side of the glass across the bottom and up the other side and ended up all over the Goodge's face before it starting dripping off his nose.   The whole pub (not just the Room 84 Show !!) burst into laughter.    When the commotion had died down a voice from the other end of the bar suddenly said "Christ I hope I don't get that Effing Glass tonight "!!

It wasn't really John's fault - he was in the throws of getting married and buying a house at the time.

With all the nostalgic videos that are around these days I often wonder if one day a shot of a Q7 passing Earlswood with "V" Signing Trains Inspector will appear on the shelves of railway bookshops!!

I duly phoned up the Operator at Brighton asked for XB218 or whatever it was and got hold of the said Station Manager. As was usual it was difficult to hear the Station Manager speaking at other end. John grabbed hold of the phone and shouted: -
"Hullo - Clinging here"................
"Clinging"....................
"Clinging".....................
"Clinging".........
"Hanging on you bloody fool" ..............................

Mr Kong remarked that whilst he knew that RM stood for Routemaster he hadn't got a clue what RT stood for. Borneo remarked that the full name for the bus was Regent 3.

"Regent 3" said Mr Kong "how do they get RT from that ??"

A shout of "1-2-3 Kong" burst forth from Borneo's lips as the rest of the Room 84 Show burst into laughter!!

The path was 12 23 from Eardley with 10 bogies. Streatham 12 29 - 12 39 to run round. The train ran a couple of times and I received a phone call from Len Arnold the Signalman at Itford complaining that the timings of the 12 23 Eardley were unacceptable as

".....this was the time when he milked the goats."

I undertook to try and solve the problem. The 12 23 Eardley was recessed in the back road at Haywards Heath for the hot box examination and the timing then carried an instruction that the train was to follow the 14 16 Horsted Keynes to Seaford. Goats and Len Arnold happy and 12 23 Eardley safely to Newhaven.

A Kongonory story that I can remember vividly was during one of the many power cuts that occurred during the 1973 Coalminer's strike.   What you need to remember here was that an electric kettle was kept in one of the cupboards for Sunday tea making.   During the rest of the week a tea trolley came to the office in the mornings and afternoons.

On this particular day the power went off early in the afternoon.   At around 1430 Les Woodhouse was humming away to himself in the corner of the office when the telephone burst into life.   On the other end of the phone was one Amy Price - Manageress of the Canteen. She told Les that as the lifts were inoperable there would be no tea trolley service that afternoon - whereupon Les shouted out the bad news to the troops.

At this particular moment Ted Copus was talking to Trevor Lloyd whose desk was adjacent to Les's.   Up bounded Ian King (Kong) who cried out loudly............ 
"But Uncle Ted we've got our own tea making equipment!!!".

As a result of this, a plot was hatched to ensure that he did indeed miss the train.   This was made easier by the fact that, in those days, Borneo never wore a watch.   On a particular Monday Borneo along with Stuart Burrell had to attend a meeting in the Rules Section on the 10th Floor.   Stuart was asked to wind his watch back 5 minutes while he was at lunch - which he duly did.   Whilst Borneo was at lunch the clock in the office was wound back 5 minutes and the rest of us wound our watches back while Borneo was at his meeting.   We all waited in anticipation.   Sure enough one minute before his train was due to leave East Croydon Borneo appeared in the office to collect his jacket and go.   As he went the rest of us leapt up to the window and watched the 1625 ex Victoria depart from East Croydon as Borneo walked across College Road - mission accomplished.

The next morning we waited in anticipation for the expected bout of swearing when Borneo arrived for work.   He didn't say anything and neither did the rest of us.   At around 1100 when Borneo was out of the office Les Woodhouse said that he was convinced that Borneo hadn't realised that it was the Room 84 Show who had made him miss the train.   We decided to have another go.   Once again clocks and watches were put back 5 minutes when Borneo wasn't around.    Bingo he missed the train again !!

Wednesday morning came and still nothing was mentioned either by Borneo or the rest of us. As you can probably guess we had yet another go and voila Borneo missed his train for the 3rd evening in a row!!!

Thursday morning came and once again nothing was said.   By now it had become routine for all of us to put our watches back 5 minutes.   This time Borneo left the office whilst his train was in the platform and we watched him sprint across College Road as his train was departing from East Croydon.   Surely he would realise by now that the Room 84 Show had stitched him up!!!!

However, come Friday morning, nothing was said by anybody again and so for the fifth time that week the section clock was put back 5 minutes plus all of the watches.   As the afternoon drew to a close Borneo was standing at the window adjacent to Ray Snellin's and Maurice Turner's desks with his working timetable on the window sill.   He had a very puzzled look on his face and kept looking at the office clock and the WTT.   Surely we had now been rumbled.   However Borneo suddenly looked round at Maurice and said "Hey what time does that DEMU leave ?"   As quick as flash Maurice replied "about twenty past" (the DEMU actually departed at 1625).   Much to our surprise Borneo missed his train yet again to leave the score for the week on Borneo 0 Room 84 Show 5.

However he bumped into Garth Hentley on East Croydon station who queried why he had come down so late as his train had just gone.   We had been rumbled and on Monday morning the air was shall we say a tad blue.   Two things helped us with this turn of events: -
The first was the fact the the 1625 Victoria to Littlehampton was on time every evening.
The other was that Stuart who caught the same train as Borneo had somehow managed to leave the office to actually catch the train without raising Borneo's suspicions!!

In comes a train with headcode 12 on it and the announcer states that it is calling at Redhill, Haywards Heath, Preston Park and Brighton.   Gargoyle remarks on the fact that it is about 3 minutes early and that this evening there is a buffet car on it - which was mighty unusual.

Anyway Gargoyle gets on the train and decides to make use of the buffet car.   The train duly departs and Borneo waits for his to arrive.   In comes another train with Headcode 12 on it and confusion reigns.   Borneo sensibly asks the driver what train it is and finds that it is actually the 1628 Victoria to Brighton.   Yes the previous train was in fact the 1625 Victoria to Littlehampton with the wrong headcode on it!

Borneo gets on the train to go to Brighton and then change for Shoreham-by-Sea.   Meanwhile Gargoyle is blissfully unaware that he is heading towards the Quarry Line rather than his stop at Redhill.   He is quaffing a can of McEwans Export (Was I really stupid enough to drink that rubbish in those days) when he realises that the train is approaching Coulsdon North at a rate of knots considerably higher than it should be for the Redhill Line.   Whoosh..... the train goes onto the Quarry Line and the penny drops as he realises that he's on the 1625 Victoria to Littlehampton with a wrong headcode on the front and that he's going to Three Bridges rather than Redhill.

So whilst all the Southern House penguins who live in Dorking and Godstone are grumbling about their missed connections Gargoyle does the sensible thing and has another tin of beer!   To cap it all the train back from Three Bridges is scheduled to also miss the next connections from Redhill to Dorking and Godstone.   Oh Happy Days!!

A special notice had been issued detailing the arrangements, with each copy numbered and sent to a specified person.   Strict instructions were issued that these were not to be photocopied, but the relevant information was to be extracted for each location, and issued to them.   The numbered copies were to be returned to the Timetable Section so that the man in charge could eat them, or whatever he did with them.

Two Class 47 locomotives in good order had been specified by the CM&EE, as had a nice First Class coach. We commence in the Control.   The Power Controller, realising that the two nominated locomotives had been allowed to escape, considered his options.   There was a 47 at March, on its way back from overhaul at Doncaster. It would be nice and clean... He called up the March Train Crew Supervisor, who arranged for it to be whistled over to Cambridge, where the coaches were waiting. Now, the pace of life was always slow in East Anglia, and the shunter was standing there thinking, now, if I get the loco to attach to that coach, and shunt it onto the back of that rake, that should just about do it, is there anything else I need to do first, when someone in authority came along and told him to jump to it, move it, quick!   Well, the job got done, but in the haste, the shunter forgot to remove the gangway shield from the last coach. The train went on its way to Kings Lynn, complete with a Motive Power Inspector (MPI).

The Kings Lynn driver who was to work the train to London was a bit surprised to see him when he booked on, as the only indication (security gone mad) that he was to work a Royal was the change of the train's train number on his diagram, the significance of which, naturally, he'd overlooked. Anyway, he pointed out to the MPI that they would lose time to Ely, because of the rationalisation work that was going on (it was a York scheme, and they hadn't bothered to work it through with the train planners in the London office....), and, of course, they had an extra coach. The train had not been retimed to take account of this.

Nevertheless, the driver was sure he could make up the time. Meantime, someone had realised that the stewards wouldn't be able to get through the train to serve the royal party's breakfasts, because of the gangway shield.   There was no time to split the train and re-attach it, so they were just about to use a sledge-hammer when the Rolls appeared.... Time to hide the hammer, and go and be introduced. At the first stop, bearing in mind the branch platforms are short, the youngest and fittest steward was despatched along the ballast with the orange juice, climbed up into the royal coach, and served it. At the next stop, he was supplied along the ballast with the coffee. At Ely, the first long platform, people were startled to observe a line of stewards parading along the platform with silver salvers, in order to serve the breakfast proper....

After leaving Cambridge, the locomotive, just ex overhaul, started to play up.   The MPI was busily engaged in pushing back circuit-breakers as they popped out. Despite his best endeavours, the train finally came to a halt, with the royal coach on a level crossing.   A passing motorist realised who was in the coach, and produced a camera. HM was not amused.

At Bishops Stortford, a down Cambridge was terminated, and the locomotive was nicked to assist the royal into Liverpool Street. Unfortunately, this meant that the red carpet, carefully placed, was now one locomotive length ahead of the royal coach.... The Eastern Region Operations Manager had to go in and apologise.   HM complained about the ride of the coach, so it was decided that another would be found for the evening.

The evening working started alright, and the train was only slightly late as a result of a track-circuit failure around Bishops Stortford.   HM, however, had complained about a rattle from under the replacement coach. It was met on arrival at Cambridge by a young, royalist fitter, who tore across the platform and flung himself full-length alongside the coach for a better look.   It was all that could be done to prevent Security dragging him off to the Tower....

As indicated before, the platforms on the Kings Lynn branch were very short, but all the regulars knew about this, and were used to travelling in the right coach for their stop. Unfortunately, with an extra coach on the front, they were all in the wrong coaches, and delays ensued at all stations. The Ops Manager had to go in and apologise for the second time, and faced some interesting comments from Prince Phillip. He was about to retire. Bang went his MBE.

Back at Liverpool Street, an investigation revealed all the sorry tale above - plus one more. A copy of the circular was received from a location that shouldn't have had one. It transpired that the Area Manager at Cambridge, instead of extracting and issuing relevant data to his staff, had copied the circular the relevant number of times, put a letter after the number of his copy to identify which had gone where, and amended the "Return to ..." note to require that they be returned to him - on all except this one.

Mick still has a copy of a cartoon which appeared in the Daily Telegraph. It is a picture of a door, with a royal crest on it. The door is marked "BR Complaints Department. By Appointment".

In the meantime, we got people back at the rate of one a day, but one Northerner who was working (I use the term loosely!) for us had sent in a sick-note from his GP in Brighton to say that he was suffering from gastro-enteritis.   A week later, we got another one - from his GP in Newcastle.   We could never figure out (a) how anyone could have this for that long (nothing left to come out), and (b) how he could have got from Brighton to Newcastle with it, knowing what BR bog-paper was like at the time ("cardboard" would be a fairly accurate description).

Clancy started on the Monday as promised, she had applied for the job (it was the vacancy).   I briefed her on a couple of things, and they came up in the interview (no, I wasn't on the panel).   She repeated what I'd told her, got the job, and the rest is history!"

The horse was due to depart next day - Derby Day as it happened - but the horse was going to Holyhead for shipping to Ireland.   We found one at Tunbridge Wells West but the only way to get it to Forest Row at that time was to put it on the back of a steam hauled train.   It came up on the 08 47 Tunbridge Wells West - Victoria service and the horse was loaded via the booking hall.

Now it was booked to go on the 10 58 East Croydon - Willesden vans and the solution was therefore to back the passenger train into the middle road at East Croydon, something we all watched.   Then of course the 09 35 Willesden to East Croydon terminated at Kensington Olympia....

The 09 47 Tunbridge Wells West - Victoria was backed over the same points to pick up the horse box and it was whisked away to Victoria where we used the Royal Train standby engine to get it to Willesden, and away.