Last of six generations of railwaymen retires

CHENNAI: November 30, 2019 is going to be a bitter-sweet day for Noel Fuller, who will retire from the railways after almost four decades of service. It’ll also be an important day in the Fuller family history as it will break the long-standing tradition of working for the Indian Railways.“Only when my father’s elder brother began researching our family history with the help of a genealogist that we realised that my great great great grandfather, Thomas Fuller, too had worked in the railways as a driver,” says Noel, adding that his uncle spent hours at the Family History Centre in Florida, which microfilms the marriages and deaths of British commonwealth citizens. “Thomas Fuller’s son, John Edward Fuller, was a Protestant but got baptised as a Catholic later and the certificate shows Thomas’ occupation as a train driver.”John, also a driver with the Indian Railways, went from Coimbatore to Madhya Pradesh and died of a sunstroke in 1870. “His son, my great grandfather, Albert James, worked in Madurai as a fireman, and his son, my grandfather John Burton Fuller, began working as a fireman at the age of 15 and retired as a loco foreman,” says Noel, whose father, Patrick, who began his career in 1951 in the central workshops at Golden Rock, Trichy, as an apprentice mechanic. “Later, he was transferred to Tambaram and became a driver. When he took voluntary retirement after 32 years of service, he was a special grade driver.”Joining the railways was a natural choice for Noel. “In my days, Anglo-Indians joining railways was nothing new. Most of the drivers, guards, TTs and fitters were from the community,” says Noel, who did two years of industrial training (radio and TV mechanics) before joining the railways as a casual labourer in October 1980. On November 28, he will retire as senior technician, EMU workshop, Tambaram. “I work in the pneumatic section, and deal with the braking systems of trains,” he says.Since his father “kept to himself” most of the time, Noel doesn’t have interesting anecdotes from the past to share. What he does remember is growing up in the railway colony in Tambaram, and the gruelling work schedule of train drivers. “The life of a driver is hard as they don’t have fixed timings; work often keeps them away from family, even on special occasions,” says Noel. But the railway colony was a close-knit family with neighbours taking care of each other even when the man of the house was away. “Hindus, Muslims and Christians lived together in harmony. During Karthigai deepam, the whole street would be lit up, during Diwali, sweets were distributed and on Christmas we shared cake and other goodies,” says Noel.In the past decade, Noel has witnessed a rapid change in technology and operation. “Trains have got faster and more comfortable; bio-toilets have been introduced in a big way and there has been a lot of safety upgrade in train design. Solar panels have also been introduced,” says Noel.His two sons have made different career choices — Denzil, 30, is a marine engineer while Andrew, 28, is a captain in the Indian Army. As Noel looks at it, all good things come to an end. But he is optimistic that the romance of the railways will never die. “Air travel may be faster but to really see the country and its ever-changing landscape, people, culture and food and experience the very soul of India, you have to travel by train,” says Noel.