ONE of the last railway guards from the era of the steam train has retired.

Grandfather-of-three Terry Day from Wareham has spent the last half a century working on the railways.

The son of a signalman, Terry's love of trains began as a 10 year old spending Sundays with his father who worked a signal box at Holton Heath.

Terry left Wareham secondary modern school at 14 and started his first job as a messenger and signal lad at Bournemouth railway station just weeks after the Queen's Coronation.

He said: "I think those were the best times for working on the railways.

"I have enjoyed my working life right the way through but the best times were during the age of steam."

He recalls Bournemouth train station bustling with staff and with a queue of passengers for Waterloo stretching back to Holdenhurst Road.

"There were parcel trains, trains bringing fish from Grimsby, mail and paper trains - there was even an afternoon train bringing cakes down from Lyons in London - all those deliveries are on the roads now," he said.

After two years service in the RAF, he rejoined the railway covering crossings from Keysworth to Dorchester in the days when barriers were opened and closed by hand.

As a porter/guard in the mid 1960s he worked in Swanage and Weymouth, returning to Bournemouth as a train manager in 1967.

He remembers using a periscope inside the train wagons to check on signals further along the line, using a wiper to clear steam from the window.

"You used to be able to take a train through West Moors, Broadstone and the New Forest and there was a line to Swanage.

"I can even remember when there was a massive yard with stables near Poole station when deliveries were made by horse and wagon."

Since the privatisation of British Rail, Mr Day has worked for three different companies at Bournemouth train station - South West Trains, Intercity and Virgin.

He said: "The government sold British Rail off cheap when it should have spent money on the railways. If they had put in the money that they are now paying to these private companies it would have been better kept under British Railways.

"This is only a small country and there are so many train companies - as soon as one runs late it has a knock-on effect with the others.

"There is not enough leeway between trains running."