Ben Baker Railway Guard
circa 1950
Born in South Milford in 1910, my father had many relatives working on the railways – his grandfather, father, uncle, brother and cousins.
He passed his medical examination in 1925 but had to wait until 1926 before a vacancy arose at Burton Salmon for a lad porter. After this he worked at Monks Fryston, Sinnington then at Bolsover where he eventually met Elsie who was later to become his wife. He worked in Skegness, Ollerton, and Wakefield, and he married Elsie in Bolsover in 1935.
In 1937 he became a horse shunter at Horncastle, afterwards becoming a class 3 shunter at Marsh Lane, Leeds. In 1939 he became head shunter and later guard at Neville Hill until 1949. Then followed a guards job in Mansfield, in February 1953 he started work in King’s Lynn as passenger guard and moved with his family to one of the station cottages in Wolferton in May 1953. He sometimes worked on the royal trains between Lynn and London, in 1969 he moved to Harrogate and retired from the railways in 1975.
The above information was kindly supplied by his daughter Mrs Diane Jackson 2008.