TODAY we tell the tale of Good Old Goodies in Blackburn, following our look back at engineering firm Foster Yates and Thom last week.

Clayton and Goodfellows, based at Atlas Works in the Lower Audley area of Blackburn first opened in 1857, and operated for more than a century, before finally closing in 1983.

This story comes from Trevor Jepson, who worked there as a fitter for eight years in the sixties, after serving his apprenticeship at Howard and Bullough in Accrington.

Trevor, who lives in Feniscowles, remembers when the firm was granted the world manufacturing rights for railway ballast consolidating machines, which weighted more than 14 tonnes.

In 1969, British Rail placed an order for 16 of the Matisa machines, which cost £14,000 each.

This is the first one that was made – indeed it was the first of its kind in the world – and it stopped the traffic as it moved under Darwen Street bridge, on its way for testing.

Waiting at the sidings at the back of the former Walker Steel works, close to Blackburn station, for it was Trevor, fitter Emil and electrician Harold Carter.

It worked at only one mile an hour, ramming and fixing ballast under newly laid sleepers, at the rate of 75ft in less than five minutes, so that trains could immediately use the line, at speeds of 50mph.

The same job would have taken 20 men an hour and half to complete and several days would have had to elapse before a train could travel the track – and then only at speeds of 12mph.

Clayton Goodfellows received orders for the machines from South Africa, Switzerland and Australia, while Japan also showed great interest.

The locomotive’s cabs were air conditioned and also equipped with an electric kettle so drivers could brew up as they worked.

Laughed Trevor: “I remember that the first thing we wanted to test when the loco arrived at the sidings was the kettle.”

From about 1860 onwards Blackburn-made engines were exported and by the beginning of the new century large numbers of colliery winders, water pumping and textile mill engines were being sent abroad, mainly to India and South Africa.

This trade, although reduced after 1920, survived until the outbreak of the Second World War.

A wider range of products was offered by the remaining heavy engineers during the post-war years but this was unable to stave off their eventual closure in the 1970s and early 1980s.