Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

BUCKDEN AND THE RAILWAYS 210 advertisement in the national press, Messrs Phillips and Lamont’s Direct Supply Agency listed Buckden as one of the stations where they had arranged with ‘respectable local hauliers’ to deliver ‘fresh wrought coals of every kind and quality’ into consumers’ cellars at very reasonable terms. Passing goods traffic included lengthy trains of fruit heading westwards; not all fruit in the Fens went to Chivers! Buckden station entered the Second World War with Stan Smith now promoted to stationmaster, following the retirement of his supervisor at Grafham. He was assisted by porters Ted Lymage and Ernie Gibson. The war saw traffic through Buckden augmented by deliveries for the US Evacuation Hospital at Diddington of prefabricated hutting, with its accompanying construction personnel. Although Buckden was the nearest station, the ambulance trains delivered their casualties to Huntingdon East for unloading. Stan remembered train-loads of petrol arriving for the depot. If there were enemy aircraft about, the train drivers would stop their engines under the adjacent road bridge to hide the light from the firebox. By 2006, the only relic of the Midland Railway remaining in the parish was the cutting that lies to the west of the A1. Although no trace of the station itself survives, the signal box - or at least its top - is now in the safe hands of the Spa Valley Railway, having been erected on a new base at their Tunbridge Wells West station (it was moved there via at least one museum). They hope one day to have it back in working order. Stan lived at the station after the line’s closure and used the box as his greenhouse. Afterword by Anne Spreckley Mr Smith and Ted We lived across a field from the station, and I recall that it was staffed by the stationmaster, Mr Smith, and the porter Ted (Lymage). Mr Smith epitomised all that a local stationmaster should be and I have often thought that perhaps the Reverend W. Awdry 1 had used Mr Smith as his model. He was ruddy-cheeked and had a kind twinkle in his eye for everybody, although his bearing was quite authoritative due to his portliness. Ted was the chief and only porter and the general factotum on the station, although I don’t think that he was allowed to sell tickets or speak out of turn. The station was moderately busy. At weekends in particular, many service personnel from RAF Brampton used the line, these being the days before every family and teenager had a car. During the week and depending on the season, trees, saplings and horticultural goods were loaded into the guard’s van (by Teddy the porter, of course). This business came from Laxton and Bunyard, nurserymen of Brampton, the forerunners of Bickerdikes (now Frosts). The Laxton connection was to the famous nursery in Bedford, the developers of the eponymous Superb apple. Special Delivery One of the special services rendered by British Rail and executed by Mr Smith was the daily transportation of small quantities of mother’s milk to the premature babies unit at Mill Road Maternity Hospital, Cambridge. I had left my tiny twin babies there and each day I walked across the field to the station to make sure that the precious liquid was on the 3.00 p.m. to Cambridge City Station. If I was running late Mr Smith came across the field to meet me. The bottle was given to the train guard, who had strict instructions to hand it only to a hospital porter who would be on the platform. A very rare and unusual service given free of charge by British Railways! Sources for this chapter Bazley, J. H. R., Great Northern Railway Guide to Angling Resorts (Leeds: Chorley & Pickersgill, 1909) Mitchell, Vic (and others), Branch Lines around Huntingdon: Kettering to Cambridge (Midhurst: Middleton Press, 1991) ISBN 0 9065 20 93 2 Slack, John, The Arrival of the Midland Railway at Kimbolton, Cambridgeshire in 1866 (Ashbourne: Landmark Publishing, 2001) ISBN 1 84306 051 5 Wrottesley, John, The Great Northern Railway (London: Batsford, 1979) ISBN 0 7134 1592 4 Interview on BBC radio with Stan Smith, 1984 Percy Pepper’s recollections, courtesy of Mr & Mrs Brian Smith The Times August 22 1898 See also the A to Z Section under the Great Buckden Hay Robbery , and railway mania . The latter describes the consequences – good and bad – that the coming of the railways had for nineteenth-century Buckden and twenty-first century local historians. 1 Creator of the Railway Series books about Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends.