The History of Ruddington Depot
HomeThe StoryInterviewsPhotographsResources
Wartime Operations
Getting to work
By far the majority of the workforce worked shifts. They came to work by train right into the site, and alighted at a passenger platform a short distance from the northwest corner of the filling factory. Ken Marriot and Jack Bagguley watched some of them arrive:
“Trains came in three times a day, when they changed shifts, at 7 o’clock, 3 o’clock and 10 o’clock. They came from Loughborough and from Nottingham each time, a whole train load of five or six coaches from both places. Some people came from the other side of town, so the train started up north and passed through Basford before it got to Nottingham.”
A non-corridor coach can hold 70 seated passengers and one with a corridor, 48. The trains were overcrowded, and when the Depot was fully operational they had up to seven coaches, so up to 500 passengers could arrive in a single train. As one train arrived from the north, another pulled in on the other side of the platform from the south, and up to 1000 people spilled out. This happened three times a day. Both trains waited until the people coming off the previous shift had boarded and taken the places of those who had just arrived to begin theirs. Then they set off again, back to the place they had come from, dropping off passengers at every station as they passed.
Shift workers living locally walked or cycled to work or if they lived on the bus route, by service buses. Some of the people who did not work shifts travelled by service bus or train. If there was a long queue waiting at the bus stop, workers at the Depot had priority over other passengers. This caused much resentment among local residents who were left to wait for the next bus. There were also works buses which came direct to the site from Long Eaton, Beeston and other places not on the railway line, or a bus route to Ruddington.
The Story > Chapter 3 > Section 3.04