Station Pilot

[locojoe]

One of the turns at Enfield was a week on station pilot,as a young passed cleaner I did not like this job as it meant remaining within the station limits all day. I liked it better to be out on the road, having said that,the pilot job had it's perks.to start with not much shovelling had to be done,so there was no hard work. As well as that it was usually the pilot where the driver first let you have a go on the regulator. In those days Enfield goods yard was fairly busy, there was plenty of coal waggons all owned by different coal merchants. Sometimes the coal merchant would ask a fireman to empty a full coal waggon into one of the coal bays for him. He would pay about 3 quid to whoever did this job, I did it once and was so tired when I'd finished, I can't remember how much coal the waggons held, it was a few tons. Of course the driver had to agree as it left him alone on the engine to shunt the yard. Whatever money was earned was split half each.
Alan Locojoe