Friends of the Rail Forum

To appreciate how much has changed since Jeffery Fry began working at Waterloo railway station, consider that his first job was shutting the sooty windows of the steam trains after they shunted in to the terminal.

That was in 1961. Several role changes and 58 years later and the 73-year-old is now the longest-serving employee for both the railway station and South Western Railway - and among a select number of people around the UK to have worked so long for just one employer...

And because he is the longest-serving member of staff at South Western, Jeffery enjoys the bragging rights of being employee number 000001 - which has led to him being given the nickname "Number One" by his colleagues.

Yet he still distinctly remembers the routine of those first shifts, when he was aged just 15.

"I'd start with the 8:09am six-car, then 20 minutes later do another train," he told the BBC.

"Three of us would do it. Then I was a tractor guard. If any parcels fell off the trolley you had to put them on it - I did that for four years. We'd load potatoes, mushrooms and flowers, and they'd all go to Brentford Market."

After that he enjoyed a couple of years in admin. "I'd come in but first thing, I had to make cups of tea," he says. "That was the most important thing!"

But his favourite role was working as a shunter, which involved taking the diesel engines off the trains, and rubbing shoulders with royalty...