Too Busy to Delegate, by Mike Collins

 

 

Come and meet the railway characters of old, the "originals", mavericks, eccentrics, defectives, or straightforward barmpots", introduced to us by the author who for many years worked as a British Rail Civil Engineer based in Yorkshire.
 

 

 

Retired Civil Engineer Mike Collins' second foray down the branch lines of memory have produced a host of humorous new faces, and some recognisable 'barmpots' from his first volume.  Notable among these are Bill the prankster, the helpful hilarity-prone Wendy, and the megalithic figure of Mike's No. 2, John Midgley.

There are triumphs aplenty, including the heroic feats of Mike's Stakhanovite team on the York Remodelling Project, and swift action in the face of electification, bulls on the line, and the "wrong kind of snow"

  Yet there are sadnesses as well - a fatal road accident, the use of tunnels as personal termini, not to mention the author's dismay at the onset of privatisation.    

Enter into this weird world of cants and chair screws, twistectors and traxcavators, pocket theodilites and gricers, where the humour is wry, the delivery straight - and the dialect Yorkshire!

 

 

 

 

 

Available through:  www.amazon.co.uk

Further information: bartsarmley@hotmail.co.ukk  (omit the final k)

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