WWII: Army were trained in tracklaying at King's Newton

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MENTION of the marshalling yards which were built at Swarkestone during the Second World War, as part of the Army’s decoy tactics, brought back memories for Harry Waller (87) of Melbourne.

For he was stationed, for more than two years, in nearby King’s Newton, where the Army set up a massive military railway depot to train Army personnel in essential wartime skills such as track laying and bridge building.

Harry says the photograph illustrating the item about the marshalling yards was not taken at Swarkestone, as stated in Bygones. It was a picture of some Royal Engineers working on the King’s Newton track.

“I remembered it all very well,” said Harry. “There were a great many Army personnel working there at the depot.

“I was there for two-and-a- half years and it was built mainly on agricultural land. It ran alongside the River Trent and I remember it used to get very foggy and cold.”

Despite those unpleasant memories, Portsmouth-born Harry returned promptly to Derbyshire when he had leave, after fighting in India and Egypt, for waiting for him was Jessie Robey, a local girl with whom he had fallen in love while stationed here during his Army service.

They were married in 1947. He left the Army a year later and went back to work at the depot – by this time being run by the Ministry of Works – as a shunter for 16 years.

He was part of the team which ripped up the King’s Newton track in 1963, before it closed down the following year. Some of it was returned to its original agricultural use and the rest is now used for storage.

“I have been here ever since,” he said, “so Melbourne has been an important part of my life, thanks to working with the Army and meeting my wife.”

Harry worked for several firms before spending the 14 years up to his retirement, in 1982, as a pipe fitter’s mate at Rolls-Royce.

He and Jessie have a son and daughter, Michael and Jennifer, and a 19-year-old grandaughter, Michelle.

As they married in the same year as the Queen and Prince Philip, they had hoped for an invitation to a Buckingham Palace garden party in their golden year but were invited to Chatsworth House, home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, instead.

Said Harry: “It was really lovely. I’m sure it was better than anything at the Palace.”