Peter Walker
gone but not forgotten
Last night in my Croydon pub a leading local history light came in with her daughter and two cousins. She introduced me to them, saying "He writes books on local history." "Well, pubs and trams, I suppose, yes", I said with due modesty. "I didn't know you were into trams too, Jim's a tramway man". "Oh I keep my hand in. I did a piece on the Soho Road trams for a local history website in Birmingham only this very afternoon ", I said. "Now there's a coincidence. I work for Centro, been planning our Metro for 20 years!" said Jim (her cousin). Over the next ten minutes Jim and I had a lively off-the-record discussion, until he apologised and went back to his hostess.
We've had tramway specialists in the pub before. Pat lives locally again - he has designed tram track for most of the new UK tramways. Monty works for Bombardier and used to stay here while commissioning new vehicles for South Western Trains, but has also spent a lot of time abroad testing debugging the new stock.
The nicest chance meeting like this was 20 years ago when a Brummy lorry driver told me he used to deliver papers for Gwynne's newsagents on Hawthorn Road, He was 15 years younger than me, and he brought me up to date on a lot of families I hadn't thought of for years.
Peter
We've had tramway specialists in the pub before. Pat lives locally again - he has designed tram track for most of the new UK tramways. Monty works for Bombardier and used to stay here while commissioning new vehicles for South Western Trains, but has also spent a lot of time abroad testing debugging the new stock.
The nicest chance meeting like this was 20 years ago when a Brummy lorry driver told me he used to deliver papers for Gwynne's newsagents on Hawthorn Road, He was 15 years younger than me, and he brought me up to date on a lot of families I hadn't thought of for years.
Peter