CHARLES PARKER SHARPE

Charles was born in Slough in 1878, one of 9 children. He was employed as a cabinet maker, and married a lady called Elizabeth. By 1911 they were living at 70 Cromwell Road, Caversham with their two young children Ernest and Dorothy. Sadly Elizabeth died at 44. Charles remarried a couple of years later to Marian Parker and they had a daughter together, Marion Joyce.

By 1921, Charles and his family had moved to 19 Lorne Street in Reading. He was working as a carpenter and joiner for the Great Western Railway’s signal department on Caversham Road - possibly making the wooden semaphore signals, or even the woodwork of signal boxes themselves? Son Ernest, now 16, was a turner and fitter for John Warrick the Cycle & Motor manufacturer; who at the time was making bodywork for three-wheeled delivery motor vehicles destined for Selfridges and the Post Office.

Charles was still working as a railway carpenter during the Second World War, he was in his 60s, and was actually living right beside Winnersh station in 1939 (or Winnersh Halt as it was known then) at the house called Lockesley, at 19 Robin Hood Lane.

Daughter Marion’s husband Victor McLeonards was the son of an aeronautical engineer, and grandson of another railway carpenter at Caversham Road signal works - a colleague of his father-in-law Charles Sharpe!?

ELSIE LINDSEY

Elsie’s mother Rosa Shuff was a housemaid until her marriage in 1911 to London piano maker Albert Lindsey. They were living in Finsbury Park when Elsie was born. Albert was called up for World War I in 1915 and was serving as a Private in the Royal Fusiliers when he was killed in action on 27 July 1916, aged 31. Elsie was only 4.

Rosa was from Caversham and she and Elsie moved back there during the war and by 1921 they were living with seven relatives at Rosa’s parents house Dean’s Farm Cottage, near the Thames. Elsie’s uncle Walter lived there too - he was an engineman for Great Western Railway. In 1939, aged 27, Elsie was working for GWR herself, as an indicator board operator - updating departure times and platform numbers. Elsie and her mother were living at 6 Erleigh Court Gardens in Earley by now.

Elsie married Norman Parlour in 1941 and appear to have had two children. Norman was a seedsman’s clerk - presumably at Sutton’s Seeds - a company who benefitted from the railway at Reading to handle large consignments of seeds and bulbs.

Elsie’s mother, who was widowed at 25, never remarried, and lived to the ripe old age of 100. Elsie herself lived to 2003, she was 91.

The best-selling novelist of all time - the writer of 66 detective novels - Agatha Christie loved train travel and was fond of using trains in her novels, as crime scenes for example. Sometimes they’re such a big character in the book they feature in the title. In The ABC Murders (1936) each victim has an ABC Railway Timetable left by the body; in 4.50 From Paddington (1957) a train passenger witnesses a murder in a slowly passing train; and in Murder on the Orient Express (1934) inspired by real events, a murder occurs on a glamorous, snowbound train.

Agatha and her first husband, businessman Archie Christie, moved to what had been described as an ‘unlucky house’ in Sunningdale in 1924. It was close to the railway station, so Archie could commute to his job in London. In 1926 Agatha’s mother died and a few months later Archie asked her for a divorce, having fallen in love with someone else.

In December Agatha’s car was found abandoned on the North Downs, close to where her husband was spending the weekend with his girlfriend. Agatha was feared missing, and a newspaper offered a reward for information.
In fact she’d had a nervous breakdown and used the train to ‘disappear,’ travelling as ‘Mrs. Neele’ - her husband’s lover’s name. She was discovered 11 days later in a Harrogate hotel having been recognised by staff.

The following year Agatha began her next work - a Poirot novel called The Mystery of the Blue Train set on a luxurious train from London to the Riviera. She put her ‘unlucky’ Sunningdale home on the market and after her divorce was complete, she set of to see friends in Istanbul on the Orient Express...!

In 2023 as part of its ‘100 Great Westerners’ series GWR named the Intercity Express train 802110 ‘Agatha Christie’

GEORGE GIBBINS

George Edward William Gibbins was born in Oxfordshire in 1898 to Catherine and James Gibbins. In his teens, George joined the Royal Army Medical Corp as a Private, marrying Elizabeth Gale on Christmas Day 1919. George returned to the army was serving at their Headquarters in Lod hospital in Palestine in 1921. Meanwhile back in England, his wife Elizabeth and their daughter were living with his parents in Kingston-upon-Thames. Elizabeth, now 24, was working as a pantry maid at a hotel, describing herself as a widow, suggesting George’s whereabouts were unknown and presumed dead. But happily George did survive his time in the army and the family were reunited.

By 1939 they were living at a house called Sonoma on Watmore Lane in Winnersh - with possibly four children. George, now 40, had retrained and was working for Southern Rail as an ‘electric track lineman’ as part of the railway’s electrification using the ‘third rail’ system as the region transitioned away from steam.
George lived until 1970, he was 71.

LOTTIE MARTIN

Seven year old Lottie Martin was out picking primroses with her sister Mary and their 19 year old nurse maid Ellen Bird on Wednesday 18 April 1883. At Langborough railway crossing Lottie sat on the stile as they waited for a luggage train to pass shortly before 6pm; she promptly jumped down to cross the tracks. But at the same time a London & South Western passenger train, running 3 minutes late and obscured by the first, was coming in the opposite direction. Totally unaware, Lottie was struck by it and killed immediately. The driver himself, Edmund Mann, didn’t realise what had happened until he received a telegram on his train’s arrival at Reading Station.

Lottie was born in Wokingham in 1876; the youngest of six children to Hannah Smith and local baker Henry Martin, whose bakery was at 27 Denmark Street, Wokingham for many years (where The Lazy Frog Massage shop is now). Her brother Weston, a fire brigade member and baker like his father, continued the family’s bakery business until his death in 1955.

A few months after Lottie’s death, a wooden footbridge was erected over Langborough crossing, and the Railway Co decided to build a permanent bridge and a new station building at Wokingham. There’s a Wokingham Society blue plaque commemorating the unusual construction of the bridge in 1886 ‘from re-used rails’ but I’m really pleased this project has rediscovered Lottie’s tragic part in it.

CHARLES WILLOUGHBY

Charles was born in Dunsden in 1872, one of at least six children to parents Mary Ann Hamblin and husband Henry Willoughby, an agricultural labourer. After leaving school Charles worked on a farm, marrying Annie Purton in 1896.

By the time of the 1911 census, now aged 39, Charles described himself as a railway labourer and platelayer (laying and maintaining the tracks) and living with his family at Matthews Green, Wokingham. They would have 8 children in all, though only five survived: Sons Edmund and Charles and daughters Elsie, Gertrude and Lilian. Lilian went on to marry Reginald Brown, a former railway navvy - a tough, often dangerous, job of heavy, manual labour, building railway bridges, cuttings and tunnels, with little more than picks, shovels and gunpowder.

A decade later Charles is still platelaying, with the family now living at 144 London Road, Wokingham (opposite Froghall Green, where St Crispin’s School is now). He died in 1932, aged 59.

His son Charles was a railway gateman - manning level crossing gates - for South Eastern, though by 1939 he’d become a railway porter with office duties, and particularly at Winnersh Station after WWII. He was living at 9 Barkham Road, just yards from Wokingham Station (and Lottie’s railway bridge!) with his wife Edna May and their seven children including Gladys, Leonard and Cyril.

Cyril Willoughby (Charles’ grandson) started working on the railways himself when he was 15 years old, becoming a ‘fireman’ on the steam trains when he turned 16. He went on to drive trains from the age of 23 - steam trains initially and later diesels and electric - working the Reading-Waterloo line through Winnersh much of the time - until his retirement.

A racecourse, a ‘Royal Racecourse’ at Ascot was first established in 1711 by Queen Anne.With the coming of the railways Ascot station opened in 1856, welcoming its first race-goers by railway in 1857.
Ascot’s first day of racing in 1864 was Tuesday 7 June.The Prince and Princess ofWales (the future King EdwardVII and Queen Alexandra) were in attendence. Racing had been running late and railway officials were concerned about the sudden rush of passengers.Trains were run rapidly one after another.There was an on-board altercation at Egham about card sharpers on one train which lead to a short delay, but it was enough for another crowded train behind to catch up, despite it not travelling at a great speed. At about 7.45pm these ‘special’ race day trains collided, crushing the guard’s van at the rear to “splinters” but luckily the guard had jumped clear. Described in the Buckingham Advertiser as “those long, unmanageable trains, heavily laden with holyday makers”. Five men died at the scene, a sixth dying from his injuries a few days later. Injuries were often described in the newspapers in all-too-vivid detail that we shan’t repeat here.

Those who died were: William Winfield, gardener to Mr Bracebridge, Sherbourne; Edwin Hall, corn chandler, 6 Duke St, Manchester Sq, London; John Cobbett agent to racing celebrity Mr Padwick, Hill St, Berkeley Square, London; Robert Wilkie, publican Glove Inn Kings Road, London; Joseph Clegg, publican Harp Inn, Jermyn St, London; Esau Trigg, Brighton publican (Hero of Waterloo Inn) 34 Lower Market Street, Hove - died a few days later at Charing Cross hospital

Born in Sussex, Helena trained as a GPO switchboard operator, which led to a job as a telephonist in British Rail’s Southern Region at Waterloo in 1977. She realised very quickly that the job didn’t suit her. She disliked being on the periphery of the railway industry not in the thick of it. Stories of a colleague’s husband’s new career as a guard piqued her enthusiasm.The Sex Discrimination act had come into force a couple of years before - promoting equal opportunities regardless of gender - so encouraged by her female colleagues to become the ‘first lady guard’ Helena filled in the application form. Needless to say her application progressed grudgingly; they hoped a medical exam and tough training courses would weed her out as an inadequate candidate but she passed them all. She was in! On her week’s induction, obviously the only woman, she learnt first aid, and about railway rules and laws.

Between courses she did a stint at Wimbledon Station. Her first uniform was a male guard’s jacket with jeans and Doc Marten boots. She was treated as a celebrity, the first woman ‘learner-guard’ and treated as one-of-the-boys. On the a shunter’s course she met some hostility. Accused of taking work away from a man. On this course Helena recalls she “had to lift a notoriously heavy ‘buckeye’ coupling’ ... too heavy for any woman to lift. A semicircle of tormentors gathered around sniggering when my turn came. I knew this was the end of my brief sojourn on the ‘real’ railway: not only would I never be a guard, I would exit utterly humiliated and to a chorus of jeers and ‘told-you-so’s’ from my harassers.The thought of this, and the feeling that all women would be judged on my success or failure, gave me the strength to lift it. But there was no applause and no apology.”

The guard’s course followed. Learning how “all the various signalling systems worked, and procedures for dealing with every emergency that could possibly arise: collision, fires, signal problems, derailments, drunks, drug-takers, objects on the track”. She passed with 80% and moved to her depot,Wimbledon Park, where she met a little animosity, “especially from those who had failed the guards’ course”. She was even accused of getting the job through favouritism. Six weeks on the ‘road learning’ involved accompanying senior guards on their shifts, day and night. She was welcomed into the card games in the smokey mess room.“Seeing the sun rise over a Berkshire field covered with rabbits and set over the Solent were magical experiences.And what can compare to the view from the front cab of a train rushing through a snowstorm at 90 mph” she says.

Sixteen weeks since her application, on 23rd March 1978, she worked her first train alone.The 12:46 return Waterloo to Windsor. She was still only 19.

In her spare time Helena had studied for a degree in Sociology and Social History and she became a full-time historian following a railway career-ending accident in 1999. Her particular focus has been on Victorian women, publishing several books on the subject, including her well-regarded book ‘Railwaywomen’ which took 10 years of research into their hidden histories.

Read Helena’s full reminiscences on the beginnings of her railway career at hastingspress.co.uk/railwaywomen

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