Product details
- ISBN 9781916966703
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 20 Nov 2024
- Publisher: The Conrad Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
‘Vaporisings of a Locoman’ is a wonderfully entertaining, varied and beautifully observed memoir by ‘Buffer Beam’ (Frank Leonard Button) of his life early in the twentieth century. Yes, much of Frank’s life was spent working on the railways, but this memoir takes the reader into many of the nooks and byways of a life well lived by an observant and deeply and cheerfully witty man. For example…
‘Our boss was a chemist-cum-farmer, who had bought this half-derelict farm, situated on the lonely Essex marshes, out of the proceeds of a dubious remedy he had been selling through the agency of the cheap periodicals of the day. This was advertised and subtly worded as to cure all ‘female irregularities’ at 1/1 ½ per box, post free, and was sent out from a small chemist’s shop in the East End of London.
The only irregularity it cured was the vendor’s bank balance.’
Welcome to Buffer Beam’s world!
‘Buffer Beam’, aka Frank Leonard Button, was born on a farm in Buckhurst Hill in Essex in England on 11 April 1894. Frank spent most of his teenage years working on the farm and joined the Army in 1914. After the First World War he started work for the Great Eastern Railway at Stratford in London and that was the beginning of a long career on the railway. Frank had a huge love of life and of people and was extremely popular, and his energy as a writer and observant love of humanity is in full evidence in his book ‘Vaporisings of a Locoman’.
