Back to the steel.

A short period of unemployment followed. The turning point came on a day when I went for two interviews. One was a driving job, driving a Transit pick-up for a plating (chrome plating etc) firm. The other was  for a stainless steel stockholders, working in the warehouse.

I was offered the driving job and having been rung and told I hadn't got the other one I naturally accepted it. However I wasn't to last long. About one week after I started, I had a call from Gordon Noble at GME Steels offering me another position that had come up. Due to their pick-up driver having a very serious accident on the A19, in which there was a fatality, he had been sacked, blame having been attributed to him, I was offered a job driving their new, second hand pick-up. Due to the rush to buy one, the only one they could find was a 2.5 litre petrol. The company also ran a Ford Cargo 7.5 tonner from it's Sheffield Warehouse.This proved to be my introduction to driving for a living.

 The first week was mainly local work until the Friday when I had my first taste of the North East. This became a favourite area of mine, even to the point of considering moving up there. One of my regular drops was to a small stockholder, the boss and staff of which I became friends with. I just happened to say to the boss there one day that we were thinking about the possibility and he actually invited me to stay with him for a weekend. I was pretty gob-smacked at that, and even more so when I said I didn't know if my car would be capable of the trip, he said to come by train and I could borrow his Beemer to look round. I have to admit that this was one of my very favourite drops of all time. Another drop up there I used to like going to was NEI Reyrolle at Hebburn. With GME supplying all manner of stainless products, I delivered into several different shops at this site. The best was where most of their stuff went and was staffed by a Geordie and a Mackem. I took great pleasure in calling the Geaordie a Mackem and the Mackem a Geordie. Many was the time I thought they might get a bit too upset.*

This was also to be where I had my first experience of driving anything bigger than a van. When the regular driver of the 7.5 tonner was off, I 'stepped up' to the bigger vehicle. Eventually having failed his class one test one time too many, at this time you could still go straight on to a class one from a car, the 7.5 tonner driver passed his class two and went off to a different job. This meant the Cargo was now my drive and the foreman's twin brother was hired to drive the pick-up.

This job was to last for about five years when I decided, having seen an advert in the Sheffield Star, to apply to the new South Yorkshire Supertram, still being built at the time, for the position of Customer Service Assistant. This position was to deal with all manner of things involving passengers along with driving the trams.

*For those not in the know, Geordie = Newcastle, Mackem = Sunderland.

Supertram.

It was to be several weeks before I heard from SYT, so long in fact that I had actually forgotten about applying. I was invited however for the aptitude tests and a first interview.  Shortly after, the letter came inviting me back for the second interview. I eventually received an offer of a position and as the money was far superior to what I was earning, plus it was exciting to be in on a new venture, I naturally accepted. I was in the fourth group of ten to start and the training, lasting nine weeks in total, took in all aspects of light railways. One anecdote from this period was when one of the trainers showed me a cutting from The Star about a man claiming to see a UFO over Meadowhall, from his home at Wincobank the previous night. The article gave the precise time and Roger pointed out to me that it was precisely at that time, and in the right location that I had gone through a 'section insulator' on full power. We were actually trained to come off the power through the insulators as the resulting flash caused damage to the pantograph. We never did dis-illusion him by contacting the paper.

The most auspicious moment for me came when I became the very first South Yorkshire Supertram driver to be disciplined for speeding in a tram. This occurred on the first section to be opened, Sheffield Centre to Meadowhall, and was on the approach to what was the terminal at Fitzalan Square. The approach had a 10mph speed limit and one day a member of Her Majesty's Railways Inspectorate was at Fitzalan Square as I approached. He must have an exceptional perception of speed because shortly after I was told to take the tram back in to the depot for it's 'black box' to be read. This showed that despite me applying the brakes at the time my speed had picked up to a very dangerous 13mph. Shock, horror.

My time on the trams came to an end when my wife threatened to divorce me if I didn't find another job. The duty times were taking their toll, and in fairness the job had become quite monotonous once the system was fully up and running. On seeing an ad for Hillfoot Steels in Sheffiled, I was pretty confident when I saw the person to apply to was  Gordon Noble, my former boss at GME Steels. The application went in after I had spoken to him and my days with South Yorkshire Supertram were numbered from that point on.