There’s nothing quite like the arrival of spring for many of us to start thinking about getting away for a break sometime later in the year if the household finances allow. If it’s overseas you’re headed and you like the idea of taking your own car, then it’s likely you might consider taking the Shuttle service from Folkestone to Calais. If you do, then once you’re on board, you may want to spare a thought for one Bill Perkins of Barrow upon Soar.

The drivers’ coaches of the Shuttle trains were all ftted out at the Brush works in Loughborough back in the early 1990s. Each train needed two – one at each end – with each one weighing in at a whopping 120 tons. At the time, they were some of the most powerful locomotives in Europe. Naturally they all needed to be quality inspected before leaving Brush to be taken down to Folkestone to begin service. And the quality inspection was carried out by Bill. A fascinating job for an electrical engineer and, as it happened, rail enthusiast, who was given free rein to go everywhere and anywhere and look at anything – paint, body, electrics and anything else he could find. So, Bill spent 18 months getting into every nook and cranny of what turned out to be 38 drivers’ coaches for the Shuttle and 26 for the freight trains that use the same route, to make sure they were ft for purpose.

Expect the unexpected became the motto. Touching up the paintwork on the outside of the coaches didn’t sound as though it would be especially difficult but as the paint contained cyanide, Brush had to establish a separate paint spray shop with special filters to stop the painters from being poisoned! And even once the trains had arrived at Folkestone, they still needed to be tested through the tunnel, where the earlier ones encountered so much concrete dust still lingering there that their filters clogged up in no time at all.

Thirty years on, the trains are still going strong. Bill and his wife, Sheila, have travelled on the Shuttle themselves and it’s always been a special feeling for Bill that he was so closely involved at the start. So, if you are taking your car over the Channel this summer, sitting back and letting the train take the strain, why not raise a glass to Bill? Bon voyage!

Guy Silk

Did you know: The Channel Tunnel finally opened in 1994. However, there had been previous attempts. The backers of the Great Central Railway in the 1890s didn’t just want to build a railway line to London but wanted it to go all the way to Paris and even started digging a tunnel of their own, all 1,850 metres of it! It came to nothing in the end, but it’s a tantalising thought if you’re ever visiting the Great Central Railway stations at Loughborough or Quorn, that if things had played out differently, you might have been able to travel to Paris direct on the same train rather than stopping at Leicester North. Oh, what might have been!