Yes I hope so it would be very interesting, I’ve had an e-mail to say that they are having a look for it in storage, I guess it may not be a hot seller these days but I’d enjoy having a copy. My old English teacher would say that it disproved genetics! She gave me a dictionary when I left school saying I should have been issued with one on the National Health, thank goodness for PC’s with spell checkers!
I’ll let you know if I get it and a synopsis of what it contains in case there are people that have connections to Hazelwood that may be interested in any information that it contains.
Herbert Swift sounded an interesting man he took over from his father as stationmaster at Hazelwood. His father Anthony was the first Stationmaster there and 24 years later when he died Anthony took over for the next 40 years during which time he also set up a coal merchant business adjoining the station and apparently when milk deliveries were stopped to the area he set up shipments on the trains. He apparently had four management cadets train under him two of which either headed or were very high up in Midland Railways and at least one was knighted. He wrote the book after he retired. His three brothers also worked for Midland / LMS Railways including Andrew that after other stations ended as the Worksworth Stationmaster. Another Brother, Anthony, ended up as a Stationmaster at Ashchurch near Tewkesbury and when I moved down here I used to have a house a few hundred yards from the station without realising that I had any family connections down here. Two of their sisters married railway men and just one daughter was a rebel and had no railway connections but she ended up married to a gamekeeper just outside Cheltenham where I now work, small world!
All the best,
Martyn
