Mexborough and Swinton Times April 20, 1928
Mexborough Man’s Retirement
Mr Sam Holmes, 45 Lorna Rd, Mexborough, retired from military service, at the age of 65 on Tuesday.
This marks the end of the third chapter of a family association covers practically the whole period of birth and development of railway transport, from “Puffing Billy,” with his fabled Herald with a red flag, to the London to Scotland “non-stop.”
The family story in relation to railways is not yet completed: Mr. Holmes’s only son, at the age of 39, is carrying on the tradition, to make the fourth general ion of locomotive drivers.
Mr. Sam Holmes’s own record is a notable one. In 35 years of driving he has had no single mishap to train or passenger—and most of his service has been on long distance workings, with excursion and other passenger traffic.
The only unpleasant incidents he recalls are, an occasion on which a boy was knocked down by his train, and two other occasions when men committed suicide by throwing themselves in front of his engine.
The family memory covers railway development practically from its beginnings.
Mr Holmes himself recalls the opening of the G.C. main line south; and was among the first South Yorkshire drivers called on to work over the new line Beighton South, ultimately to London, but he retains the reminiscences of his grandfather, which go back to the days when the railways were almost unknown in this part of the country. He was the man who took the first train over the wicker arches at Sheffield, when the line was opened in 1847 – then the M.S. and L. The driver of the train was then married, but insisted on the lady who was to become a grandmother of Mr Sam Holmes making the flags that were to deck the little engine gaily for that notable occasion – nothing would satisfy him that the flagship with a full length of engine and tender. Later, the same Mr Holmes won fame in the day by performing then on presented it back to drive the train at a mile a minute because the Manchester – Liverpool line, to be met with great and wondering crowds at Lime Street station. After that Mr Holmes was made a locomotive superintendent at Sheffield.
The Holmes fungus in the step-by-step construction of the main cross-country line. Mr Sam Holmes himself was not then of an age to drive, his forebears were “on the line” when the first sections of the railroad from Manchester to Sheffield – and ultimately coast-to-coast – were completed.
There were days, well within the reach of these four generation of railway service, when travellers from west to east must train at Woodhead and take Stagecoach and to Sheffield. When the Woodhead tunnel was made it was but a single line affair; and the down – to Sheffield to Manchester – was made first. The company then kept a pilot on the spot, and no train might pass through the tunnel except with this pilot attached; this method of ensuring that there should never be more than one train in the tunnel at one. But the job was too much for any man. Big pay was offered the driver of the pilot; but no man’s house was standing. Even today drivers speak with distaste of Woodhead tunnel and the fumes that well-nigh overcome the engine crew with a drive-through; and in those days it was a much greater ordeal, for in addition to the fact that trains are passing both ways in the one tunnel, trains did not then hurry through at the pace they do today. Not many travellers, probably, know that at Woodhead as two separate tunnels, the up and the down – though there are passages from one to the other for the use of the line gangs.
Mr Holmes father had a considerable experience of working the cross-country line. He drove it until he was 70 years old – 47 years of it. Mr. Sam Holmes himself entered the railway service as a cleaner in 1881. The family belongs to Sheffield, and Mr. Sam Holmes was born there. But in 1893 he was put on the staff at the Mexboro’ depot, and for 35 years he has lived in Mexboro’. He now lives with his son in Lorna Road.
During the long spell he has, in his own words, “been all over the system (now L.N,E.R.) and other systems as well.”
One of the more creditable developments that Mr. Holmes himself has seen is the hours of working for drivers. Mr Holmes recalls occasion when he worked on the footplate, practically without a break food for 14 to 20 hours on a stretch. On some of those occasions he found himself nodding over his levers – “dead beat.” The company in those days were absolutely autocratic.
Having finished what any driver nowadays would call a good deal more than a. day’s work, you. were at the mercy of the official demands: you might be sent off again without a rest to the other side of the country—”and to refuse meant the sack at once.”
The growth of the railway trade unions, secret at first, through persecution, bullying, and in face of all the powers of the strongly entrenched companies, backed by public opinion that looks askance at working men’s organisation, slowly changed all that.