Oral history interview with Ray Goad recorded and conducted by Robert Aitchison on 7 May 2004, as part of the Time Tracks oral history collecting initiative. Duration: 42 minutes 25 seconds. Left school at 15, apprentice welder at Shildon Railway Works, working conditions, night school, wagons, wages, [00:02:00] axle box plant, working day; informal training, details of production line; [00:04:00] office boy, wages office, tricks played by workers, wages; [00:06:00] night school; apprentice pattern maker, working conditions, details of pattern making; [00:10:00] wagons works, repair of wooden-sided wagons, details of work carried out, patterns, plaster of Paris, steel cavity, ‘monkey tails’, woodworking; [00:14:00] banana vans, fish vans, guard vans weighted for braking, underframe and wheels made at Shildon, wooden sides made at Darlington; [00:17:00] wages; tools, cement wagons; [00:20:00] inter-department cricket; day release and Higher National Certificate (HNC) qualification, procedure for attendance at college; [00:22:00] castings in Press Shop, brake van stoves, LMS design, producing LMS patterns, patterns store, coke wagons; NUR strike 1955; ‘monkey tail’ forging; [00:26:00] apprenticeship in drawing office experience; [00:28:00] noise in works, Health & Safety, poor conditions, forge, welding, welding brackets for containers; fire in repair shop and Works fire engine; [00:32:00] father witnessed a death; 1957 introduction of clocking in and out machine; [00:34:00] details on apprenticeship, trainee draughtsman, production details for coke wagons; [00:36:00] 1958 leaving Shildon Works, National Service; return from National Service, no job at Shildon, trainee draughtsman at Darlington Locomotive Works; [00:40:00] lived in Shildon, Darlington, York; Inspector of Materials for British Rail; Shildon works closure, worry for father’s job [00:42:25] [end of interview]

Time Tracks, Shildon Railway Village Community Project was an initiative funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund that encouraged members of the public to bring photographs and documents at Locomotion to form a community archive, when Locomotion museum was opened in Shildon, 2004. Over 50 oral history interviews were also recorded with members of the community. They shared their memories of Shildon as they knew it in their childhood and throughout their lives, from as early as the 1920s, as well as their work experiences in local factories and industries, including Shildon railway works.