| Posted by
Anthony J.
Craddock Graduate of
Southern Highlands School, Sao Hill, Nr. Iringa,
Tanganyika. 1950-1954, which he attended with his sister, who is currently
resident in Perth, West Australia.
Now living in Santa Barbara, California, USA. Born Woking, UK, 1942.
Both father and grandfather worked for the East African government.
After one year in Mufindi working for the Tanganyika Tea Company, Dr.
Craddock was for many years Chief Surgeon for the Colonial Medical Service
in Tabora, Central Province, eventually moving to Kano, Nigeria to finish
his career with the (then) Colonial Medical Service. Dr.Craddock and
my younger brother drove across Africa from Tabora in a
Peugeot 203 to the
new posting. George Craddock (grandfather) was taxation adviser to the
East African High Commission in Nairobi post World War II, having been
seconded from the U.K. Civil Service after a similar stint in Egypt.
My father and I originally flew
out BOAC in the summer of 1950 on the once a week flying boat service
from Southampton Waters to Nairobi on their Short Solent flying boat.
Two of the four engines packed up over France, so we did a forced
landing in the harbor at Marseilles, so, as the plane was unpressurized
and flew low and slow, I got to be both airsick over France, and seasick
while bobbing around in the waters off Marseilles, though no awards from
the BOAC Junior Jet Club for this achievement! We subsequently limped on to Augusta, Sicily,
our first scheduled stop, where we had a week in a hotel at BOAC's
expense waiting for the next weekly service to bring us out some new
engine parts. Then on to Alexandria, Khartoum, Kampala or Kisumu (I think) and Nairobi
(Lake Naivaisha). I returned
to the UK and boarding school on the ss Rhodesia Castle in 1954.
Having been brought up train-spotting at Paddington Station in London
with my father while he was completing his medical qualifications at St.
Mary's Hospital, moving to Tabora, the major rail junction, from Mufindi
was serendipitous, as we only lived about a mile from the station (on
Boma Road), an
easy bike ride away.
Most of my school holidays I would spend hanging out at the station
or the shed.
I used to be fascinated by EAR&H, knew all the staff, drivers, firemen
etc. and would regularly hitch-hike from one end of Tanganyika to the
other on the goods trains, sleeping in the caboose. The Indian drivers
would let me drive the trains (I was only aged 11 and 12) and I actually
became very proficient at it, being able to take a heavy goods train out
of a station without spinning the driving wheels and without the use of
the sandbox, a feat which seemed to elude some of the
professional
drivers! Of course, I couldn't go up in the cab on
the high profile passenger trains as it was necessary to observe the
safety regulations with all those eyes watching.
One of my treasured memories is bringing a
300 Ton Goods train from Tabora down the Saranda Bank (1 in 30 grade)
near Dodoma at night, and every time I applied the brakes, looking back
from the cab of the 26 class loco and watching all the sparks fly off the
brake shoes on all the wagons of the train which snaked behind us round
the curve. (Technical note: on the Central line in Tanganyika we had
vacuum brakes then, not the Westinghouse brakes used on the Kenya
locomotives).
It was also good practice to keep checking the train behind to make
sure that nothing had caught on fire during the hard braking
(like the grease soaked cotton waste stuffing in an axle box)plus
of course to make sure that the wagons were all still connected!
Back in my day, the Central line engines were all wood burning (other
than our diesel shunter with the albino driver at Tabora), so kuni
(firewood) stops
were quite frequent, with the kuni stacked up by the track in advance of
our arrival ready to be loaded into the tender. I actually also
became quite proficient as a fireman, and was quite adept at launching
the logs into the bottom of the firebox in such a way that the whole
bottom of the firebox under the boiler was fired by an evenly
distributed blaze. Jack Summers Neil, a young white fireman from the UK
(the only white one on the Central Line) taught me the tricks. A
former sparring partner of the UK World
Middleweight Champion boxer Randolph Turpin, he died young after
cramping up swimming to retrieve a bird that he had shot.
Conversion to oil firing was in progress when I departed East Africa
in mid-1954.
Thanks to Jace Barbour for the scanning. |
