Trackwork in winter and summer

Besides cold, snow is another demon in railway track work. Either it’s really fine stuff that gets in everywhere despite your wet weather gear, or the big wet flakes that hit you in the eye and cause you to swear you’ll find a nice cosy inside job.

Often when you set off it all looks pretty easy with a fine, crisp, sunny morning and the work all lined up. But as you arrive, the clouds start to build and before you know it, the first flakes start to drift down and you realise just how far it is back to the depot.

Also, it’s not just getting back to the depot. Most people, when I started on the railway, relied on the buses in Sheffield to get home. You would start to worry as you approached Sheffield’s outskirts and no buses could be seen.

Sheffield’s bus service was like another part of the weather forecasting machine. They were only taken off the roads if the snow was too bad for them to handle, which, to their credit, wasn’t often. Many an argument broke out when we were far away in the sticks and the ganger, out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to the railway, insisted that we stopped on the job right up to time, despite the fact it was really throwing it down.

In summer, the reverse of winter’s wind chill was very calm, still days, when the heat would just start building up. On the track, with no shade, the ballast acted as a giant heat sink. If you were up there, digging a trench or laying the dreaded cable troughing, then you had to take care not to get really bad sunburn or dehydrated in fairly short order.

Nowadays, we are given bottled water and sun screen, but in the bad old days if you talked about sunburn you were considered to be less of a man. Especially for those of us with a fair complexion, skin cancer became a serious concern. I’ve been lucky so far, but there have been several of the guys I worked with who’ve had scares.

Thunderstorms can be a risk if we ever got caught out by a storm setting upon us out in the open. Trying to get back to the relative safety of the van with lightning coming down around you can give you a burst of speed to challenge Usain Bolt in the 100 metres sprint.

In the High Pennines, at a place called Dunford Bridge, the lines go through the Woodhead Tunnel, but before you get to there, you need to go up and over the moors. One time, we knew there was going to be problems as one storm had already passed, leaving several track circuits failed.

Off we set from Penistone, in light rain, however, it soon became torrential with hail appearing but we pressed on, climbing up to the top of the moors before starting to drop back down. I had never been above a storm but that was where we were.

You could see the flashes of lightning below us, in the clouds while we were on the road above them. Not one of my better days, as I’ve always had a fear of lightning and being in the open.

The opposite of all this inclement weather was the site of a fine sunset or sunrise, truly a spectacle to warm your heart after a long shift. Sunrise, in particular, after a long night shift, has the power to lift you up and makes up for some of the shit that has gone before.

I now live near the coast, and my route home takes me along the sea front where the sun looks like it’s coming up out of the sea. A better homecoming is hard to find.