I loved to spend my summer holidays at 'Grandma's' (Grandmother Roberts) in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, and sometimes travelled there on my own. I often shed a few tears when I had to return home. I suspect that these holidays at Grandma's were a relief from the tensions at home. My grandmother on Sunday evenings would switch on the wireless, put the headphones on, and listen to the evening service broadcast by the BBC She had originally been an Anglican, I think, before marrying my Grandfather, and would have ready to hand the Hymns Ancient & Modern and the English Hymnal together with the Book of Common Prayer, so that she could take as full a part in the service as possible. The hymns and tunes were well loved and familiar. There was no 'BBC Hymn Book' with tunes which no one knew, in those days. There must have been two pairs of headphones because that was when I first got to know and love many of the prayers from the 1662 Prayer Book. I believe that this very much impressed me and had some effect upon my decision to join the Church of England, in spite of my family and relations being Baptists.
My grandfather was a bookbinder by trade, and I would go to the end of the road, Wellington Road, cross the main New Road as it was called, and watch for him to appear over the brow of the hill on his way home from work, a copy of the local newspaper 'The Messenger' in his hand, then run to meet him. The Messenger was printed at the works where he was employed. He had a sizeable white beard and big bushy moustache and drank his tea from a big moustache cup. He regularly fell asleep in his chair after the midday meal.
Trips in my uncle's lorry were something else I looked forward to when visiting Bromsgrove [this would have been either Alice's brother Percy or Thomas Roberts]. My uncle was a self employed carrier and made regular trips to Birmingham and Worcester and the surrounding area, picking up and delivering all kinds of goods from small packages for private individuals to boxes of tomatoes and other produce for commercial firms. I got on quite well with the boy he employed to help him.
Whenever my mother, my sister Joan and I went to Bromsgrove from Attleborough, we had to walk to Nuneaton Abbey Street railway station in order to catch a train to Birmingham which connected with a earn to Bromsgrove. The Nuneaton Abbey Street station seemed quite a long walk from Attleborough, having to walk across to the other side of Nuneaton as trains from Leicester to Birmingham did not in those days run into Nuneaton Trent Valley station. The railway through Nuneaton Abbey Street station was originally the Midland Railway and through Nuneaton Trent Valley station the London North Western Railway before the LMS took them over. Bromsgrove station is situated at the foot of the one in thirtyseven and three-quarters Lickey incline, two and one quarter miles long, dead straight, and was not a great distance from where my grandparents lived. All trains going towards Birmingham had to stop at Bromsgrove for a banking engine, or engines, to come on to the rear. Sometimes the big 0-10-0 banker, the only one of its kind in Britain, was used, and sometimes two 0-6-0 tank engines. The 0-10-0 banking engine, built in 1919 for the Midland Railway, was known as Big Bertha. When the banker or bankers were ready behind the train the engine or engines at the back will whistle and the train engine at the front whistles acknowledgement so that they start together. I used to lie in bed at night and listen to the barking of the climbing locos up the Lickey incline, and particularly when the engines with small coupled wheels at the back and larger coupled wheels of the train engine at the front the beats come together then gradually separate and then gradually come together again, over and over again until reaching the top of the incline at Blackwell, when the banker or bankers slowed to a stop as the train pulled away continuing its journey. The bankers were crossed over by the signalman at Blackwell and ran light back down to Bromsgrove where they filled up again with coal at a 'hand shovelling' coaling stage which was quite near to the station and where I liked to watch the refuelling of the banking engines.
On one occasion, during the time we were at Attleborough, we had a holiday at Cromer, Norfolk. My sister remembers us being taken there by train when we were quite young, though neither of us remember exactly where we stayed. The railway into Cromer would have been part of the LNER
During my holidays I spent quite a long time watching trains from a public footpath near to and adjoining the railway lines in the Attleborough area. I would sit for hours on my bicycle leaning against the railway wire fencing and write in my book the times the trains passed and the type and numbers of the locomotives. The express passenger trains were usually from and to Rugby and London Euston and the locomotives very often were Claughton and Royal Scot, the two leading express types on the LMS. I also watched trains from near Nuneaton Trent Valley station where the branch line to Coventry and Leicester left the main line. There was also a large engine shed just there from where there was always lots and lots of smoke. While at Attleborough I made a number of friends, most of them railwaymen, who attended my father's church. Nuneaton was a busy railway junction, and it was my delight on a number of occasions to be taken by an engine driver friend, of long railway service, to the engine sheds on a Sunday afternoon and then back to his home where his wife had made tea. As he was a deacon of the church, it was, of course, a case of going to the evening service afterwards, and he always gave me a mint to suck while my father was preaching a sermon. I also had a number of signalman friends and used to visit their signalboxes at suitable times, mainly on Sundays, when they were less busy. I visited one particularly large signalbox (Nuneaton No.3) at the north end of Nuneaton Trent Valley station where trains ran both in front of and behind the box. This sparked in me an interest in railway signalling which I have had ever since. I also visited a small signalbox on weekday evenings when a friend of mine was on duty. This signalbox was situated on the main line just south of Attleborough and where three running lines become four towards Nuneaton.
I knew a young man who had been educated at the Nuneaton King Edward VI Grammar School, but instead of going in for a normal career he became a railway driver's fireman. If I remember correctly, his father was an engine driver; I remember a beautiful large photograph of a Royal Scot locomotive, hanging on the wall in his home.
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