When I
was Area Manager for British Railways at Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire, West
Wales, I made a point of dropping into the office on Saturday
mornings. One Saturday in 1968 I went in and was surprised to see a railway
parcels van in the small freight yard. The station foreman told me this
was a van of pigeons and he was just going over to let them out.
This man
happened to be the local union representative and we hadn't got on too well up
to that point possibly because his first language was Welsh while mine was
English. I asked if he would mind if I gave him a hand. It turned out that
he was a
keen pigeon fancier himself and I quickly learned about these birds.
We went
into the yard and climbed into the van. It was quite dark inside but I could
discern row upon row of wicker baskets stacked to the ceiling, from out of
which there came the sounds of gentle cooing. All we had to do was to take the
basket to the open door, open the lid of the basket and set the bird or birds
free. We then had to note the time of release on the label on the basket.
These
birds had come from a club somewhere in the north of England, possibly Halifax.
The owners would log in the time the bird arrived home which was why these
special rail moves were made mainly so the birds could be released on
Saturday mornings. The club members were working men who were off work on
Sundays had to go to their jobs on Monday.
I spent a pleasant time releasing the birds and chatting
with the union representative about pigeons. It seems they fly at great speeds
he mentioned 60 miles an hour. They would certainly fly home faster than
British Railways had brought them to this remote part of Wales. This was just
one rail car, but in some cases entire train loads of pigeons were moved across
the country.
After that relations with the union became
easier we had at least one thing in common!
Ottawa Valley Associated Railroaders - The Interchange September 2015
