Ray Giles : -

To reflect some humorous instances at Canton Depot, one that comes to mind was when I was on the night shift. If it was quiet as sometimes it was as an  Overhead Gantry Crane driver, I would go up to the locker room for a rest. One day one of the lads came up and shouted, "Ray, you're wanted on the gantry". I suggested to him that in future he didn't shout me as the supervisors office was next door, but make a sound like a bird. So the next time I was in the locker room and was needed, I heard the sound of a cuckoo and the boys took the mickey for a long while after that.

The other instance was when I was working on a shunter taking injectors out of the cylinder head when one of the fitters on the B shift had the idea that instead of taking them out with a ratchet and socket, he made two pulling rods with a thread on one end and an eye on the other. Well, the fitter on our shift got wind of this and had two made, but what he forgot to do was to get the eye welded, so when he asked me to go up in the gantry to pull the injectors out, I lowered the hooks and my mate put them in the eyes of the rods. You could see what was going to happen, he told my mate and his to keep clear (great expectations).  He said OK Ray and I took the weight, the eyes opened up and he never lived it down.

Happy Retirement Ray !