Hero Jim And The Runaway Train (22 October 1976)

One April morning in 1909 Bletchley Railway Guard Jim Bates set forth on a routine trip that was to make him a national hero before the day was out.

Jim was a middling-sized man, aged 45, and lived in St. Martin’s Street.  He and his wife had several children and had just recently celebrated their silver wedding.  He had joined the railway service in 1882 and had spent 17 years as a shunter before becoming a guard.  For the past few years his daily routine had begun with working the stopping freight train from Bletchley to Brackley.

This morning the train included a number of low-sided wagons, a “tariff” van, and also a number of wagons carrying coal and granite chippings.

On the footplate – at the start – were Driver Roberts and Fireman Lines.  These two were reputed to be on such cool terms that they barely spoke to each other.

All went normally until the train reached Padbury.  Here the “tariff” van had to be unloaded under the supervision of Station Master Ambler, whose son, Fred, worked the points for the shunting.

I do not properly understand the shunting procedure that followed.  Suffice it to say that at one stage the train was divided and Jim intended as usual to call on the driver to back the leading part to the remainder.  The driver however, had noticed some violets growing nearby and dropped down from the footplate to pick them.   At exactly the same moment the fireman dropped down from the opposite side to answer a call of nature.  Each thought he had left the other on the footplate and THE TRAIN WAS SLOWLY MOVING OUTWARD.

The spectacle filled Jim with horror.  He knew that not many miles away along the largely single-track a passenger train would be approaching and that there could possibly be a head-on collision, with disastrous consequences.

Somehow he managed to scramble up on the last truck of the departing unmanned train as it gathered speed.

He hung over the side of the truck, dropped the long lever handbrake and then proceeded to go forward to deal similarly with each truck in turn – a laborious and risky undertaking.

Station Master Ambler quickly sent the alarm signal for a runaway train to the signalman at the Buckingham box two-and-a-half miles onward.  The signalman could have switched points and sent the runaway crashing into stops, but that would have endangered the guard and he decided it would be safer to allow the train straight through the station.  The eyes of a station goodsman boggled as the train sped by well before its time with nobody on the footplate and the guard scrambling over the wagon tops.

The staff at the Fulwell and Westbury station, four miles further along were alerted.  The passenger train had left Brackley.  So, to avoid a seemingly-inevitable head-on collision, the facing points were opened.

As the miles went by, Jim was winning his way forward until, with little time left, he hit a snag.  He had intended to climb from the leading wagon onto the engine itself and stop the train, but he found the climb impossible.  All he could now do was hang on and hope.

Then with the station looming ahead, the combined brakes of all those wagons began to have their effect.  The engine was also probably running out of steam pressure.  At any rate, the train finally came to a standstill, and none too soon.

But Jim hadn’t finished yet.  He took the train back to Buckingham.  There he came upon the rightful driver and fireman.  They had been badly shaken when they saw their train disappearing and had run all the way from Padbury.  I guess they also feared what would happen to themselves when the facts got out.

The facts were no time at all in getting out.  That same evening newspaper posters in Euston Road screamed: “Runaway train in Bucks.”  Guy Calthorpe, the railway’s general manager, saw them and is said to have been very annoyed that the Press knew about the affair before himself.

Jim was a front page hero for his seven-mile exploit in the following morning’s papers, although he told them he had only been doing his job.

The railway directors presented him with a silver-mounted umbrella and a £20 cheque, plus subsequent promotion to station master at Stonebridge Park.

His appreciative railway colleagues also gave him a small plaque, suitable for framing, and a walking stick.

The unlucky driver and fireman were sacked.