While looking at Steve Green’s birthday present from his wife, a 1955 Ferguson TE-F diesel tractor, typical of what you would have seen on the farms in this area 70 years ago now, it was just the time to talk to him about keeping the Centre in the black and its future.
Thank you for giving up your time to talk to Old Glory, perhaps you can tell us how you became interested in transport preservation and what brought you to the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre?
When I left school I started an apprenticeship with R A Listers, the five year apprenticeship covered engines, gearboxes, final drives as well as agricultural machinery. This gave me a broad background in engineering. A reccession in the 80s closed the business I was part of so I found my career moving into retail management and then building and construction. Throughout this time I have always worked on old tractors and machinery as a hobby.
About six years ago my wife was working at the Buckingham Railway Centre in the office. She came home and told me that the dumper truck that takes the coal to the engines had broken down, the engine needed rebuilding. I came and rebuilt the engine for them and never left!
Taking over a sprawling Centre like this and pulling it together could not have been an easy task - what are your objectives here?
When I first came to the Centre, the chairman asked me to look at what we did, and why we did it. So I spent my time talking to people to understand what the Centre was all about. A lot of my time over the last six years has been spent dealing with the impact of HS2 on the Centre. HS2 runs right past our site and has taken a lot of our land over the years. This has had an impact on the Centre and has forced us to look
