Owen Davies: My Work on the Railway (2011)

MEMORIES OF MY WORK ON THE RAILWAY

I started my work on the railway in 1958 after being demobbed from the army. I was a porter to start with at Llandysul, later at Cardigan & then transferred to Lampeter as a lorry driver, ending up in Aberaeron around 1960. At Aberaeron I was a lorry driver delivering goods from the train – cattle feed to the farms, parcels to the shops & houses.

I left the job a year before the railway closed & went to work at the MMB at Felinfach – loading the milk to the tanks on the siding until the whole line was closed in 1965.

I used to travel up to Lampeter in the guards van when I worked in Lampeter – lodging in Paris House before I acquired an AJS motor cycle.

John and his brother Bill Andrews were signalmen. Tyrrell Evans & Lewis Williams were yardmen.

Training for the fight: Dick Richardson, the boxer, trained in Aberaeron for his fight against Brian London at Coney Beach Arena, Porthcawl, 29 August, 1960. Johnny Lewis had family connections in Cardiganshire & had been evacuated here during the war. As Richardson’s trainer he brought him down to the country to prepare for several fights. They were familiar figures running around the countryside. Locals remember them well. As I remember, they couldn’t find a weighing scale large enough to weigh Richardson in town, so they came to the station at Aberaeron where I was working to use one of our scales! Ron Davies came to take a photo of the celebrities, probably for the local paper. The staff present on the day were invited to join them in the picture. I purchased copies as a memento.

After the fight: “The Brawl at Porthcawl” was the headline in the papers after the fight. Brian London challenged Newport’s Dick Richardson, the reigning European Champion, in a bad tempered brawl but it was the post-fight chaos that caused outrage. London was cut in what he claimed was a head-butt & the referee stopped the fight at the end of the 8th round because of the cuts. Carnage followed. London threw a punch at Richardson’s trainer Johnny Lewis, sparking a massive mass brawl between the seconds from both corners. The police were called in to the ring to sort them out!