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He was a career railwayman, spending 50 years of his life working from Saltley, the largest loco depot in the West Midlands, from 1949 onwards. He was a well-known and enthusiastic cleaner, fireman and driver there, working a wide variety of routes with an equally wide variety of locomotives, steam at first and diesels later.
His Saltley time was interrupted briefly in the mid-1950s by National Service with the Royal Engineers on the famous [[:Category:Rolling stock associated with the Longmoor Military Railway |Longmoor Military Railway]] in Hampshire. There, Ron enjoyed learning a variety of railway trades beyond footplate work, and his easy communication skills enabled him to rise to become the Loco Footplate Instructor.
But when diesels took over on BR, Ron realised that steam was missing from his life, and the infant SVR scheme soon rekindled his interest, and in a wide variety of ways. Ron was a natural engineer, and his expertise and experience enabled him to lead the practical team that rescued BR locos [[80079]] and [[75069]] from [[Barry Scrapyard]], and put them into SVR and even BR main line service once again. Very few people today would manage to rebuild locos from scrap condition into active running units in unpaid time on Sunday afternoons at Bridgnorth; Ron could and did!
