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=="Soul destroying" boredom at Kidderminster==
In 1973, the Birmingham Post reported that Thomas Whatmore, a former relief freight shunter in the Birmingham area with 26 years service with British Railways, resigned a little over three months after being transferred to Kidderminster as a passenger train shunter, due to the "soul destroying" boredom of the job.<ref>[https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0002135/19730310/053/0003 Birmingham Daily Post - Saturday 10 March 1973 on the British Newspaper Archive]</ref><br>
Most trains from Birmingham terminated at Kidderminster, and as Phil Moone describes on the [https://forum.svr-online.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=4280&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=340 SVR forum], "''As soon as the train arrived the driver got out of the front cab and someone else immediately got in. The driver would walk along the platform to the rear cab closing doors as he went. When he was in the rear cab there would be an exchange of buzzers and the train would proceed to the crossover by the Junction Box. If the northbound line was clear then as soon as the train cleared the points the signalman would have the crossover reversed and the ground signal off, often before the train had even come to a stop. The original driver would then drive the train back to the station, often with only a few seconds stop at the Junction. It was a very slick operation, and presumably was to save the driver having to climb down to track level as many of the DMUs at that time had no through corridors... I also got the impression that the train was being driven from the rear up to the Junction and the person at the front would push the buzzer if the signal went back to danger or some other emergency occurred...''". This practice meant the relief driver's duty was little more than acting as a look out in the leading cab for the few seconds it took to reverse the train from the platform to the crossover point.
==See also==
