Memories 2


Away to the right at South newsham was two huge reservoirs, one either side of the lines and they fed
water to the water tower by the track side for refilling the steam trains but by now the steam trains
had gone courtesy of Mr Beeching and I am trying to stay polite when I speak of the man for my belief
is he destroyed a huge infrastructure and a way of life by destroying the steam industry in Great Britain,
ahem ahem cough cough rant over! anyway this huge stone building stood with a giant water tank on its roof
basically and was between reservoir 1 and 2, reservoir 1 hereafter called the ressie was my favourite it
was beautiful and me and my motley crew of Micky Pattinson and Johnny Ditchburn and Neil Hepple would play
for hours on rafts (illegal) and fishing (illegal) and wandering round the railway station on a Sunday also
(illegal) now next to the signal box virtually every Sunday was parked a guards van, at first we had visions
of pushing it down to some secluded corner as our camp but not realising the weight of the van we soon gave it
over and instead spent many a winter Sunday in it for it was never locked, in the station we never interfered
with a locked door but if something was unlocked it was fair game, anyway I digress, in this van we would
light the pot belly stove in the waist of the van and sit for hours telling our stories of our great railway
journeys round the world we had endured, none of which were true of course and even now on the verge of my
60th year I still remember those times like the kid on the advert with her Werthers Original. Referring to the
water tower again there was one day when I was looking for my lost crew I noticed the great iron bound door
was open a little and this could not be passed up so in I went, it was pitch black because all the windows
were blocked up with the same blackened stone the whole tower was built with, as my eyes got used to the
dimness I was heartily saddened to find nothing adventurous to report to my crew save a huge pipe going from
the floor and up into the tank. So, no glorious finds or treasure but as I snapped the padlock back on the door
I thought "hehehe the lads dont know that, I can tell them anything".I think we should go up to Delaval now hehehe


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