Jim Hurst: king of all engine drivers

In the Summer 2016 edition of Swindon Heritage Noel Beauchamp told the story of the man who drove the GWR’s first train and was a personal friend of no fewer than three railway pioneers, and lived and died in the Railway Village. Here is an extract from that article – Colourful career of the man they couldn’t sack.

He was a personal friend of Sir Daniel Gooch, but there is no getting away from the fact that Jim Hurst was a difficult character.

Official GWR reports reveal a catalogue of arguments, rows, conflicts, accidents and even fights throughout the career of the man who became the company’s first driver.

His first accident occurred in 1836 while he was still working for the Liverpool & Manchester Railway.

Sacked, he was almost immediately hired by Daniel Gooch, then Locomotive Superintendent of the GWR – although when recounting the story to the company magazine, many years later, he gave an entirely different explanation of the circumstances.

He also told the GWR magazines that he had had “some very narrow escapes”, including in 1855 when the engine he was driving exploded and “I was blown up through the air and my mate was killed.”

The first blot on his GWR career came in 1840 when he was reported for driving his engine in a careless manner and colliding with the engine Wildfire, which was severely damaged, along with the tender of the engine he was driving.

The following year he was reported for refusing to work a train with a particular guard he had taken a dislike to: a policeman called Burton.

Jim was fined £2.

In 1842 he was accused of taking passengers for a joyride, and charging them for the privilege.

‘Sundry policemen’ reported him for the offence, one claiming Jim was “in the habit of taking people on the engine to and from Kemble and Cirencester, as many as three at a time … but stopped the engine about three-quarters of a mile from Cirencester and set them down.”

Not for the last time, his friend Gooch stepped in, and Jim was able to produce a leter from one of the ‘passengers’, denying that any payment was made.

So he was off the hook.

The same year he was involved in a serious accident at Kemble in which an engine called Meteor overturned, and the passenger train that Jim was driving ended up in a siding. He later claimed it was caused by a switchman.

In 1854 he was in trouble again.

This time he threatened to take a policeman into a nearby field for a fight and after the matter came before the GWR Board, they fined the hapless driver ten shillings (50p).

Two years later it looked like Jim’s employment with the GWR was over when the Board sacked him for fighting with a porter at Newnham.

However, Gooch had been away at the time, and 10 days after his friend’s sacking he intervened and Jim was reinstated.

At the hearing it was noted by one GWR man that “You can do nothing with Hurst. He follows Gooch’s order.”

Then, in 1858, Jim found himself fined another £3 for damaging a horse box after running past a danger signal at Farringdon Road, London.

Another bad year in Jim’s career was 1859, when he ran into two engines in two separate incidents.

First he hit the tender of Dart, a Firefly Class loco, for which he was fined 14s 3d (71p), then he wrecked the buffers of Alma, an Iron Duke Class engine.

This time he was ordered to pay the cost of repairs, which would have been carried out at Swindon and amounted to £3 6s 10d (£3.34).

Then, in August 1862, there was another incident, the details of which are not recorded. But it was serious enough for him to be removed, at last, from the footplate, and permanently transferred to Swindon Works. Even Gooch seemed unable to save Jim’s driving career this time, but he still had a job – and would eventually receive a generous pension.

Although drivers were often moved around the GWR, in Jim’s case it seems successive managers at Paddington, Taplow, the Forest of Dean, Cirencester, Totnes, Swansea and Leamington all found that if they couldn’t dismiss him, there was always the option of transferring him to another part of the vast network.

For the last 30 years of his life Jim was a Swindonian, living in the Railway Village and earning, through his pension, more than most of the general workers ‘inside.’

Time ran out for him in August 1892 when he died in his 81^st year, and he was buried with his wife in Radnor Street Cemetery.

Strangely, considering he and his family would have been able to afford a memorial, the grave is unmarked, and was only recently rediscovered by the Swindon Heritage team. (Summer 2016).

The burial took place on August 15, 1892 of James Hurst, 80 years old, of 30 Taunton Street. He was buried in grave plot B1641.

Down Your Way – Taunton Street

We are extremely lucky to still have the Railway Village for in the 1960s it was under threat of demolition. Purchased by the local authority in 1966 the 19th century cottages were in a state of dilapidation and Swindon Borough Council was intent upon a project of demolition and rebuilding. However, a passionate local campaign and the vocal support of Sir John Betjeman, Poet Laureate, rescued the village and a programme of renovation began.

Without these properties it would be difficult to imagine the lives of the first railway families who arrived in Swindon in the 1840s. But today you can still walk down the backsies and hear the distant echoes of children at play; hear the tramp of the men’s feet as they return home after a hard day’s work and re-imagine life in Swindon 180 years ago.

Green, G. Peter M.; Swindon Railway Village, c.1935; STEAM – Museum of the Great Western Railway; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/swindon-railway-village-c-1935-65327

If you lived in Taunton Street you rubbed shoulders with royalty – railway royalty, that is. The first members of the Mechanics’ Institute Council Mr Grandison and Mr Fairbairn, lived in Taunton Street. Even old Mr Hurst, the first locomotive driver on the GWR, lived there although that was much later. Read more …

Thomas Oswald Hogarth – Howzat!

Peter Bremner was born in Dundee in about 1819 and arrived in Swindon around 1848. It is possible the family came straight from France where a daughter Erskine was born in 1847. For more than 35 years Peter lived at 5 Taunton Street at the very centre of life in New Swindon. Read more …

Peter Bremner – railway pioneer

It is seldom we have the opportunity to read the words of an ordinary railwayman. When George House died in 1903 the Advertiser republished extracts from an earlier interview made in 1899. Read more …

George House – a Swindon veteran

Jason Johnson – a homegrown railwayman

Here we have Jason Johnson who served alongside Robert Laxon on the Medical Fund Committee from 1853-1859.

Jason was a homegrown railway man, and in the early days there weren’t too many of them around.

Jason was born in nearby Baydon in 1819. Jason married Emma Adams in 1846 and by 1851 they were among the early residents to move into Taunton Street. According to the 1851 census returns Emma was 21, which would have made her just 17 when they married. You have to be a bit flexible when reading census returns – until civil registration was introduced in 1837 people were not always certain of their birthdate, and of course people told fibs for all manner of reasons. A wife older than her husband might shave off a few years. A child born out of wedlock might have a year added to their age and a boy out at work might also add a year to qualify for a higher rate of pay.

Jason’s job ‘Inside,’ which was the local term for the railway works, was that of blacksmith.

In 1861 the couple lived at 30 Taunton Street with their six children. Ten years later and they had moved to 27 Gloucester Street. During the intervening 10 years Emma had five more babies with one last one born in 1874.

The boys all went into the Works; Arthur and Alfred worked as blacksmiths; John and Daniel as coach body makers while Thomas worked as a railway clerk.

Jason died at his home 19 Gloucester Street on December 2, 1891 and left effects to the value of £404.