RAILWAY HISTORY LAUNCH AT NEWHAVEN TOWN STATION 2011

I wish  had known about this before, I would have been there. But since I retired I seem to need about two weeks notice to do anything.

I worked for British Rail Newhaven and spent many hours working at Newhaven Town Station between 1967 and 1971 although my home station was Newhaven Harbour. These are a few of my memories of that time. One side of the station (The up side) was much as it is now Booking Office, Waiting Room, Ladies and Gents Toilets, and the other side (The down side) had a Parcels office, Waiting Room and Toilets. The station was staffed by one Booking Clerk working days and two Leading Rail men working double day shifts I worked there covering holidays and sickness. I worked on the station and covered the booking office when the booking clerk was not on duty, the booking office also made up weekly wages for staff from Signalmen, to Drivers (Shunters) and Guards, we also paid out pensions to many retired Newhaven rail workers (Sometimes just a few pence). We also collected the rents for some forty to fifty railway houses scattered in and around Newhaven. On the down side of the station, there was a Parcels Office and at this time the railway delivered parcels, most of the big club books had there parcels delivered by rail and every parcel had to be recorded, we shared a three wheeled delivery lorry with Seaford the make was called a Scammel [a Scammel Scarab - Editor] and it turned on a sixpence (It could turn around in the road in one go). Also many of the factories in Newhaven sent their goods by rail (Ferguson, Vacco, and Parker Pen) The hardest time on the station was around seven twenty in the evening when the Post Office delivered up to one hundred mail bags to be loaded on to the 7.20 down train, but the train also unloaded up to one hundred mail bags for Newhaven Post Office which had to be placed on about ten sets of wheels for the Post Office to collect. Newhaven also had a large Goods Yard with as many four or five hundred wagons being shunted around the various Newhaven yards, these had to be carded to show there destination for the shunters to make up trains with the same destinations, this became another source for my overtime. Newhaven was still a busy railway town at this time and the town benefited from this, very sad to see it all now. Ray French

As a 13 year old (1963) I had a paper round for Whites (next to the Bridge Hotel) that included East Side, and on the way and as a perk sold papers to the commuters at the town station. The Daily Sketch was the most popular!