To generations of footplatemen they were known as ‘the fireman’s friend’. To trainspotters they were ‘Black Fives’ or ‘Mickeys’, a corruption of ‘mixed traffic’. But in my case, they were both.
In the 1950s I was trainspotting and shed bashing in Leeds and surrounds, and in 1962 I began working on the railway, at Farnley Junction 55C, as an engine cleaner.
My first real acquaintance with these Stanier classics was immediately after Easter 1962 when, in the company of John Turner, who started on the same day, we were assigned to clean one of Farnley’s finest. The charge-hand cleaner was a man by the name of Tommy Pace, a decent sort who tolerated our youthful antics and overlooked my early disappearances – more on this later.
Farnley supplied the motive power for passenger trains from Leeds City station to Manchester and Liverpool, for the York-Swansea mails, and a variety of parcels trains and newspaper trains. To cover these turns there were the LMS Jubilees: Nos. 45581 Bihar & Orissa, 45646 Napier, 45695 Minotaur and 45708 Resolution and ‘Black Fives’ Nos.44896, 45063, 45075, 45079, 45080, 45204, 45211 and 45428.
Over the coming months I would clean all of them. The ‘official’ method was to use a milky fluid called Loco A solution, but the preferred and more usual method was using paraffinsoaked rags.
At the start of each shift, Tommy would give us a couple of the main line engines to clean and possibly one of the Ivatt 2-6-2Ts which worked as station pilots down at Leeds City station – and I recall we even had to ‘super’ clean No.45080 when it was booked as ‘standby’ for
