ERNEST MARTIN
1905 – 1972
LENGTHMAN
Born in Lewisham in 1905, Ernest Arthur George Martin’s father Arthur was from Chiddingstone, and was
a platelayer and permanentway ganger on the Godstone Length for SE&C Railway. His mother Annie née
Boakes was the daughter of a gunpowder factory carter in Leigh. They lived at 21 Lagham Road, Godstone
(1921, 1939) overlooking the railway line beside Godstone station. As a teenager, Ernest worked as a
labourer at the local Terra Cotta brickworks before becoming a lengthman for South Eastern railways.
As a lengthman, or trackwalker, Ernest would regularly inspect his designated length of railway track,
to deal with minor problems and report more serious ones. He’d look out for any perishing of joints or
loosening ‘keys’ he would tap back in, or signs of subsidence and clearing litter, weeds and obstructions. In
the worst cases he’d get trains stopped until the problem was solved. Occasionally a lengthman would be
injured or killed by passing trains.
To give you some idea of the distances a lengthman might walk: a retiring lengthman in Scotland in 1950
calculated that he’d walked 36,305 miles of track in a 17 year career!
Ernest died in Horsham, in 1972, he was 67
