Tag Archives: sugar beet

Trains: sugar beet 1950s

Train in station 1950s

Train in station 1950s

We used to watch the trains shunt down the station and we used to watch them load up the sugarbeet from Thorley Manor when Caulcutts had it. Brian Pomroy b 1937
Prisoners of war used to get down the station, loading up the Sugar Beet Train. Nick Chandler b1937
There was little tiny place – you couldn’t call it a siding – where they used to shunt the old truck. That used to get loaded up with sugar beet up there.  When the train came back from Freshwater somebody used to get out there and push the truck on the railway line, and the train would push it through to Yarmouth, and then about four of them would push it up on the railways siding to join all the others. All that trouble for sugar beet.   Alec Cokes 1945.

Train in Yarmouth Station 1950s

Train in Yarmouth Station 1950s Photo Nick Chandler

Alec Cokes: Early Days

Train in siding at Yarmouth The thing I remember about grandfather, he came from a time when food was hard to come by.  When we used to go occasionally to dinner at Granny’s, they were much into greens.  Kids don’t like greens do they?  The greens they ate were just so green, bitter.  They used to have curly kale and leave it in the ground for about two years and you would strip the stalks off and it would put out little shoots and they’d go along and rub the shoots off.  It was gritty.  No doubt it was good for you if you’ve got nothing else.

The nicest thing we had in those days, in the fifties, when we were small…At the back of the railway station was a siding and sugar beet there in trucks.  We used to go down there and lift a few sugar beet.  If you cut them up they’re quite nice.  You didn’t eat it, you just sucked the sugar out and left the fibre bit behind.
Alec Cokes b 1945