Cyril Thomas was always fascinated by tales related by his father of his experiences whilst working in the locomotive department of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and later whilst driving over part of the Berlin-Baghdad railway in Mesopotamia during WWI as a sergeant in the Royal Engineers.
Now in the ownership of
Conoley & Co Ltd, the
Marshall is at Falmouth Docks
being readied for the St Eval
Rally of June 1965.
Interspersed were anecdotes of his father’s driving of a Foden steam wagon for a relative and, as a volunteer in the Service Corps, of military Fodens loaded with gun-cotton, one of the ingredients for the creation of shells.
Enthralled by what he’d heard over the years, Cyril decided that he, too, would like to become an engine driver. Upon leaving school in 1938, he approached the foreman at the GWR loco shed in Truro for a job. He was advised to write to the Divisional Loco Works Manager at Newton Abbot, although Cyril quickly realised that his prospects were not bright for he had to confirm that he had no-one who was or had been connected with the railway who could vouch for him – a pre-requisite of such employment it seemed. As nothing was ever heard from the official in Newton Abbot, he obtained a job as a greenkeeper at Falmouth Golf Club, although he was rather less than happy with that!
Then, in an inspirational moment, he recalled that the Falmouth Docks and Engineering Co Ltd operated its own railway system that was connected to the Great Western branch from Truro to the town. He decided to call on the railway manager and was delighted to discover that his father was known to him, which soon broke the ice! The outcome was the offer of a job starting, of course, at the very bottom of the pile by greasing trucks, before promotion to dropping the fires from the system’s four locomotives, and later to firing them. Those locos were R & W Hawthorn, Leslie 0-4-0 saddle tanks, two of which were later replaced by a Hudswell Clarke and a Peckett that had been bought second-hand from the CWS margarine factory at Higher Irlam, Lanacashire.
A rare
illustration
of
SD
Tolverne.Cyril
Thomas was the
driver of
its bow-mounted steam
grab
crane.
NATIONAL
MARITIME
MUSEUM
The post of locomotive fireman within the docks was initially classed as a reserved occupation, but when it was de-classified Cyril was called up and drafted into the Royal Engineers at their railway centre at Longmoor, Hampshire. After his initial training, he took and passed some specialist examinations and that led to his being classed as a TP (Transportation/ Plant) Driver, which gave him authority to drive any form of transport from railway locomotive, through diggers and dumpers to cranes, be they steam driven or, as he put it, infernal combustion engined!
That took him to an enormous variety of tasks and in 1943, he recalled, he was posted to the King’s Lynn Dredging and Construction Co, a civilian business that was preparing bought-in plant for use in the war effort, and it was there that Cyril met his wife Audrey. A later posting, and one that he remembers in particular, was to a military railway at Richborough, Kent, to drive steam cranes in the construction of sections for the Mulberry Harbour project, although he had not been made aware of that at the time, for it carried a ‘top secret’ classification. From Richborough he was sent to Gosport again to drive steam cranes, and later in Southampton, Cyril joined the Steam Hopper Dredger Tolverne as the driver of its bow-mounted steam grab crane, whilst also doubling up as a stoker and a hand in the engine room when the vessel was at sea. From the huge military establishment at Marchwood the Tolverne sailed for one of the beachheads created on D-Day, but it was recalled and redirected to Dover from where, after some weeks in port, they sailed for Ostend in Belgium. Cyril, still in the Royal Engineers of course, was later appointed second engineer of the dredger when the holder of that position was taken ill and disembarked.
