Hero train driver’s grave marked with headstone after 52 years
ON a bitterly cold first day of February, with rain hovering and low temperatures exacerbated by an icy wind, 70 or so people assembled in a Cheshire churchyard in honour of a railwayman who nearly 53 years ago sacrificed his life because he opted to do his duty.
Wallace Oakes, a well-liked colleague at Crewe shed, had joined the LMS as a cleaner in 1947, and by a fateful day in the summer of 1965, had risen through the ranks to become a main line driver. The diesel revolution was in full swing, but on June 5 that year he was at the controls of No. 70051 Firth of Forth,
