Bill Gunning
Cleaned up re-posting of this portrait of Bill Gunning. Bill was the senior driver at Bath Green Park at the time of the S&D closure and was the driver of 80043 on the last day. A. Parsons was his fireman for that trip. He often gave me rides but couldn't this time as Hugh Ballentine was on the footplate with an inspector.
My last footplate trip with Bill was on the 8.15 from Bath as far as Evercreech Junction on 1 Jan 1966 with Class 4MT 76013, Bill Appleby was firing
Bill was close to 65 when the line closed and he opted for redundancy. As the statutory notice was not complete he continued to work at the shed helping with disposal of withdrawn locos. Chris Price was his fireman during this period. They would use one of the Ivatt tanks for this, but would have to remove and hide the whistle overnight because of the souvenir hunters
6 March 1966
Bill Gunning
Cleaned up re-posting of this portrait of Bill Gunning. Bill was the senior driver at Bath Green Park at the time of the S&D closure and was the driver of 80043 on the last day. A. Parsons was his fireman for that trip. He often gave me rides but couldn't this time as Hugh Ballentine was on the footplate with an inspector.
My last footplate trip with Bill was on the 8.15 from Bath as far as Evercreech Junction on 1 Jan 1966 with Class 4MT 76013, Bill Appleby was firing
Bill was close to 65 when the line closed and he opted for redundancy. As the statutory notice was not complete he continued to work at the shed helping with disposal of withdrawn locos. Chris Price was his fireman during this period. They would use one of the Ivatt tanks for this, but would have to remove and hide the whistle overnight because of the souvenir hunters
6 March 1966