When Starcross railway station had a booking hall

Many  thanks to Sea Urchin for this delightful story from the days when Starcross railway station was fully staffed.

A week at Starcross

It is late autumn 1955; there is sense of approaching winter as a keen east wind is whipping the water against the pier timbers. I am a young man standing on a railway platform at Starcross station on the mainline between Exeter and Plymouth in the West of England. It is a time of Elvis Presley, Rock 'n' Roll and the Cold War. For me personally, it is a time of excessive energy and of youthful optimism in a resurgent post-war Britain. In short, for me, it is a great time to be alive.
My job was a Booking Clerk on the railway, and I had been directed to the station as a temporary replacement for another young man who had been called up for his National Service. My duration of stay was for one week until a more permanent arrangement could take place.
It was a typical wayside country station, the tranquil days being past with long periods of quiet inactivity, occasionally interrupted by sudden bursts of movement on the main line or a local stopping train meandering its way to and from the county town of Exeter. In those quieter moments I whiled away my time out on the platform observing the railway scene; Starcross was an interesting place, the station was right up alongside the estuary of the river Exe and the down platform (west facing) was supported by timber piles with a series of wooden steps to form the jetty for the Exmouth ferry to tie alongside. Starcross was an excellent place to obtain fishing bait in the form of peeler crabs on the mud-flats at low tide. Whilst there I made an acquaintance with a professional 'bait man' who for a short time used to send me bait down on the train for a small sum [to] ...Kingswear. With hindsight, I suspect these moments at Starcross  would have been shared by enjoying a 'Player's' cigarette.
One day, whilst in such a mode, I casually noticed in the distance a muffled rumbling and a billowing of smoke snatched away sideways by a brisk east wind heralding the approach of a steam hauled non-stop express bound for London. I recognised the locomotive as a former Great Western Railway 'King' class, resplendent in glistening green, burnished copper and polished brass, hauling a rake of more than a dozen fully laden coaches carrying hundreds of passengers. Heavily loaded, the engine was in full stride straining hard in the collar, as the carriages sped by I became aware that each set of windows were occupied by faces pressed hard against the window, eagerly scanning the estuary and open English countryside; it took a little while before I realised that all the faces were black. With the red tail lamp receding only wisps of white smoke accompanied me as the station returned to its tranquil self.
Again, with hindsight, I guessed the train was a special boat train from Plymouth to London and the passengers were immigrants arriving from the West Indies; they were answering the government's call to do the jobs the British would not do.
I had been aware of the government's invite to former colony workers to come to England to supplement the labour force, but this was the first time I had witnessed reality in action. I asked myself where all these people were going to live? Who would meet them at the station? Who would look after their needs? How would they find a job? I considered these questions and many more in my young mind; I marvelled at the organisation and planning that had gotten them thus far; little did I know I was witnessing the embryo efforts of Britain's fledgling mass immigration programme.
All this happened a long time ago, but the memory of that day has never left me, the rest as they say is history. Oddly, the story for me did not end there, if I may indulge a little longer, I would like to tell you the sequel to this tale.
Twelve months later, I too marched off to serve my two years National Service in the Royal Air Force. One day in 1957, when half way through my service at RAF Stafford in the Midlands, I was sauntering away from the station cookhouse after a midday meal when I fell in step with a stranger among many strangers, for it was a large camp. We engaged in conversation, (as you do) the usual stuff: where do you come from and what was your job? Well, slowly but surely after a little while, it dawned on both of us that our answers were corresponding most uncannily, and both realised in a way we had met before, for I was talking to the guy whose job I had relieved for a week at the railway booking office at Starcross some two years earlier. We both had a good laugh.
We continued walking and he told me he was stationed at RAF Lichfield which was about ten miles away and had only come over to Stafford for the day. His job was MT (Motor Transport) so I asked him if he knew a Bob Mitchelmore from Dartmouth (I already knew that Bob was stationed at Lichfield).
He was taken aback and fished out from his back pocket a set of irons (knife, fork and spoon-carried at all times) and proffering them to me he said, 'Do you know who these belonged to?'
Looking suitably puzzled I replied, 'No, whose are they?'
He then went on to tell me he had lost his own irons (probably stolen) so Bob Mitchelmore gave him his as he was leaving the RAF after completing his length of service.
My stranger, (whose name I have now forgotten) and I parted company agreeing it was a small world; he told me he himself would soon be going home to Starcross and his old job on the railway, as he too was about to finish. I never saw or heard of him again...