Interview about use of steam trains from Bletchley station in the 1930s and 1940s.

Monica Austin recalls her ‘happiest moments’ of train travel were trips to Bedford for shopping and to visit her aunt, when she was a small child during the war. In war-time she would see lots of soldiers about on trains and stations; and railway station name signs had been removed, to confuse foreigners. She also remembers holiday trips to Yarmouth & Swansea by train. Her husband’s uncle ran the bookstall on Bletchley Station platform 4 (Wymans), she also recalls the Refreshment Room. When she started at Wolverton Grammar School in 1946, she travelled daily by train; she recalls the short journey, the times of trains, and some boys from the Woverton Tech. School who were ‘real horrors’ and teased the Grammar School pupils. Steam travel was very dirty, she comments: ‘but it was also very vibrant – so much going on all the time – these days the stations seem to be so empty because you haven’t got porters you haven’t got guards …’. The large number of workers at Wolverton who travelled by train meant that the station was always very busy.