The Pier and Trains

The Pier and Trains (Extracts)
by Kenneth Myall

The winter of 1946/47 was a bad one. it snowed and it blew and it was freezing cold, and the carpenters were doing a mock-up in wood of the new trains in that part of the building.
I was up there with another chap, and they had brought a load of tables and chairs ready for the restaurant, from the NAAFI. They had red tops, and although they had wooden sides they were painted cream. We had to paint all these; we wore thick heavy coats as the wind was blowing in through all the gaps in the building and it was freezing.
The trolley that used to go up and down and take the goods and supplies. They had that running in and out of the station to see if it would clear the platform, and where it didn’t they had to take a bit of the platform away. And that was before they had started building the (new) trains.

Everyone was frightened of the old Pier Master. He was a bit of a dragon. Well, this chap and I were painting these tables and chairs. It was that cold, we got an old dustbin in and some coals in it and coke and wood for some heat. The carpenters called out: “Watch out the old man’s coming” and they all went away, frightened out of their lives. The old man came in and said “Hello chaps. You’re keeping warm then. Make sure you put that out before you go, won’t you.” “Yes, sir, we’ll tip the embers over the side”. “Keep up the good work.” The carpenters all stood open-mouthed thinking we were going to get a b****king.

Well when the pier got into difficulty, he got us all up in the Pavilion and he told us all about what was happening. I suppose you could say they were famous last words, but he said “Chaps, the boat is sinking. All hands to the pumps.” And he was almost in tears when he said it. He was hard man but he really did run the pier like a ship. Everything was clean. Everything was done right. Well when Mr. Flintoff took over, he put the pier back by not doing anything. He cut down on the maintenance, and the pier ran down.
I was told by some of the men that worked there before the war that the pier made such a profit that it gave money to help keep the airport going.

It’s such a shame they have let it go because it is such an icon. Southend wouldn’t be the same without it. They tried so many things to generate money, and they tried a night club down there but it didn’t work because they didn’t consider that when you get off that train, the wind is blowing like a ba****d, and women wouldn’t go down there with their nice clothes on and their hair all done up. They needed a covered walkway, which they never got.

In the summer you are stripped to the waist while working and people comment with "Oh, what a lovely job you’ve got", and they’re sitting in their deckchairs on the old sun deck. Of course we weren’t just painters and signwriters, we would rub down the woodwork and re-varnish it, and I’d say "yes", but it’s a different story in the winter. We had no heat, we’d have one width board up from the platforms, so the ends were still sticking through, so we could get down for painting, and all we had was a gas ring and a metal plate to heat our water up in a bucket. When it was that cold, we had warm water in the bucket so you could rub down with wet and dry paper, it’d very quickly turn to solid ice. I was wearing a duffle coat while painting those (cream and green) trains. I worked window-side in the station and my mate worked the other side, and we had special trestles made up so we could get to the roofs.

We’d rub down and then paint from the roof down, do the corners and when the sides were finished, and then put the black lines on. We didn’t quite get through one in a day. There was always something to finish up the next morning and that delayed rubbing down to do the second coat. We used to put a half and half coat on, and then a coat of gloss, and then flatten that down, and then varnish it. We used to get a beautiful finish because there was no dust – it was all blown out by the wind – they looked like they had been sprayed. We had a chap, he used to paint Limousines when he was younger, and then he worked for Howard’s Dairies, he painted their carts, well he taught me to coach paint.

The bloke who was in charge, he was a sign writer who came from the Kursaal, he was c**p. We used to get through one set (seven coaches) in the winter. All the seats were taken out and we had one chap inside. He painted the ceilings and sides. The seats were all rubbed down and stained with Black Japan (you can’t buy it now).

People asked me what I did, and used to say that the painting work covered the pier, the foreshore all the way from Leigh to Shoebury, all the lifeboat boxes and the lifebelts along the seafront (which included stencilling work). We also had the (Westcliff) open-air swimming pool; over the sides and putting all the depth numbers on it, and the changing boxes. Once they had let the water in and the numbers weren’t finished, and we were in the pool in a boat, leaning over with the water up to out elbows at the deep end trying to paint, and where it was shallower, we were in swimming costumes standing painting there. There were some posts to paint and sign write by the breakwaters. (Click to enlarge picture, right)

The Pier Works Force mid-1950s

On the pier we had to make signs up in the Pier Master’s own words that said: ‘Don’t Throw – People Below’. That was because the deck where the boats came in was lower and those on the top deck would chuck their litter over and it would all drop on them.

Extracts from an interview held on 21st August 2009

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