The History of Ruddington Depot
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The End Game
Varied jobs and good wages
Many of the workforces had jobs which required them to work in more than one place and perform several tasks. Harold Lowe was a fitter’s mate from 1955 – 1965.
“I worked in the repair shop where all the maintenance was done on all the Depots’ vehicles. They were all repaired and maintained in the shop which is now part of the Heritage Centre, all the vehicles, trains, cranes, everything. The same inspection pit is still there. They used to drive trains and lorries over it to work underneath them.
I worked with a very clever person whose name was Arthur Carter. He could do anything. Every morning I went with Arthur right to the far end of the Depot where the generators were. They were ex-search-light generators that were used to light the buildings without mains electricity. They were massive. Every day we had to start them up with a starting handle at the front. Arthur had rigged up an ingenious starting motor, which fitted onto the flywheel and got them going. Every year we stripped the generators down, all three of them.
In 1965, after being transferred to the R.O.F. Nottingham for four or five months I came back to another job on the vehicle side, working with cranes. It was called slinging. Very large cranes lifted the biggest monsters off the low loaders, very heavy rollers and tractors and things like that.
We worked from 8 o’clock till half-past four or five o’clock with a break for dinner, and earned a fiver or more. Saturday morning was overtime and we got dirt money. When we did a dirty job and got dirty hands we got dirt money, a flat rate of ten shillings a week extra.”
£5 for a 42 hour week, plus extra payments, was more than most manual workers earned at that time. The working week was shorter and at the equivalent grade wages were higher than in 1945, when groundsmen were paid 81/- (£4) for a 48 hour week. Wage rates at the Depot had always been above the local average. A labourer working on the site earned more than some of the skilled tradesmen who worked for local firms nearby. This led to some ‘downsizing.’ Young men with a family and a mortgage took a job at the Depot, at a lower level of skill and responsibility than their qualification and experience warranted, in order to increase their income. The shop stewards disapproved of this practice as one skilled craftsman discovered.
“I was employed as a general labourer, but was soon spending most of my time in the plumbers’ shop, until I got into trouble with the unions who tried to put a stop to it.”
The Story > Chapter 8 > Section 8.03