History

The Crewe Dinner - an Experienced Rail Collective Supporting Future Generations

Our DNA

One of the many institutions founded by F W Webb was the Crewe Dinner - and it is one of those institutions which still flourishes. The 100th was held in March 2007 and the 114th in 2023.

It was in 1884 that the first Crewe Dinner was held. The Past and Present Crewe Association, for a long time known as the Crewe Premiums’ and Pupils’ Association, began in the 1880’s at the suggestion, it has been said, made by Aspinall to F W Webb.

That first Dinner of the Association was held in London at the Criterion Restaurant, Piccadilly, London. In a letter to the Railway Gazette in May 1967 - the year of the Diamond Jubilee Dinner - Colonel Kenneth Cantlie, who was himself a Premium Apprentice, wrote that the origin of the Dinner was “the desire of the less staid Premium and Pupil Apprentices to find a valid excuse for a weekend in London” - as well as to show a mark of their appreciation to their chief, F W Webb, who is believed to have been the Chairman of that first Dinner.

Menu cards of the 4th, 5th, 6th and 10th Dinners still exist and show that the Dinners were lavish occasions. They moved from the Criterion to the Walnut Rooms of the Grand Hotel in Trafalgar Square by the 6th Dinner. The Dinners comprised eight courses and four speeches were made - originally in response to the toasts:

“Old Crewe and London & North Western Railway Men”

“Present Crewe and London & North Western Railway Men”

“Our Leading Railway Engineers and Locomotive Superintendents”

“The Chairman”

Auld Lang Syne concluded the evening - or was it early morning?

Perhaps it would be useful to examine as the backcloth to the Dinner, the history of the Pupil and Premium Apprentices. “Crewe apprentices were an essential part of Crewe Works and of the far-flung Crewe Tradition”. So wrote Brian Reed in his excellent book on Crewe Locomotive Works and its Men.

The first premium apprentice on record was William Woods. Lord Delamere paid a fee of £15 for Woods to Francis Trevithick, the first Works Manager at Crewe, in 1846. Premium apprentices came from much wider social backgrounds and geographical areas than did the trade apprentices. The Company received a sum of £200, in instalments, for each boy who was then put through a five year apprenticeship and paid normal trade rates. The ‘Premiums’ went through a variety of shops and also attended some day classes at the Mechanics Institute. Pupils were generally accepted from the ranks of the premium apprentices although a few were taken direct from university or after experience in another works. These young men were not pupils of the Company (the London & North Western Railway) but of the Chief Mechanical Engineer and it was he who had a free choice as to whom he took. Pupilage lasted two years at a cost of £150 a year, half of which went to the Company and half to the Chief Mechanical Engineer. It was therefore for the likes of these apprentices that the Dinner was founded.

With some lapses - during the Boer War, the two World Wars and when there were strikes, e.g. 1926 and more recently COVID-19 - the Dinner has been held annually ever since 1884. It has usually been held at a venue in London to keep to the original tradition, although just a few have been held in Crewe at the Crewe Arms Hotel. In 2007, the year of the 100th Dinner Andrew S Gillitt was Chairman, having attended Dinners from 1934, having been on the Committee for many years and attending his last Dinner in 2011, a span of 77 years during which he attended 60 Dinners! He was also the unofficial photographer. In 2007 a second event was held at lunchtime at the Crewe Alexandra Football Ground; to cater for the large number of those who wished to participate.

One of the most entertaining of the Dinners was that of 1919, the first one after the First World War, held in Crewe when Gresley and Aspinall sang, to the tune of ‘The Holy City’, J A Bowen’s poem ‘Crewe Steam Shed’. This was also sung at the Dinner in 1984, 100 years after the first, with F G Clements, then Chief Mechanical & Electrical Engineer, London Midland Region, British Railways, at the piano.

The 49th Dinner was held on 5 May 1939, and there was mention of a revival in 1950, for holding the 50th Dinner. In the March 31st issue of The Engineer, there had clearly been reference to ‘the discontinuance since 1939 of the annual dinner of Past and Present Crewe Pupils and Premiums was regretted and it was suggested that a revival of these functions would be popular with many engineers and others’. ‘Eric A Robinson, Managing Director of the Superheater Co Ltd at 53 Haymarket London SW1 would be pleased to hear from those who would be interested ‘ was included in The Engineer of early April 1950.

It took some time for the Dinner to restart after the Second World War. W B (Bill) Broadbent, R C S (Michael) Low and Andrew S Gillitt met together to discuss how they could ease the Dinner ‘out of Euston and up Camden Bank’ - on its journey again. It took till 1953 to reinstate it, and that year, chaired by Robert A Riddles, it was held in Crewe at the time of the opening of the new Apprentice Training School in Crewe Works.

Again, it took some time to start again – it sounds as if it came to a stand on Camden Bank! The Dinner was next held in 1958, chaired by F S Bennett, one of the few remaining members of the 19th Century circle of motorists.

In 1959 under the Chairmanship of Colonel Kenneth Cantlie, those attending enjoyed a film about the last steam locomotives built at Crewe. Whilst dinner suits were obligatory up till then, that year saw the wearing of dark lounge suits becoming acceptable. However, even today the majority attending wear dinner suits.

Sir Reginald Terrell, who had been Secretary of the Crewe Dinner for many years before the Second World War, was Chairman in 1960. The Steam Shed Song was sung again then and F G Clements was at the piano.

In 1961 the number of speeches was cut from five to three, and comments were made to restrict the length also. H G Ivatt chaired both that Dinner and the 1963 occasion. A model LNWR locomotive was borrowed from the BT Historical Railways Collection.

In 1962, R E Trevithick - great grandson of Crewe’s first Works Manager - was in the chair and paid for all the pre-dinner drinks. The name of the Association was changed to ‘The Crewe Dinner’. That year F B Roberts, Editor of ‘Engineering’, handed over the Secretaryship to J P Metcalfe.

The traditional male preserve of the Crewe Dinner was broken when Miss Denise Morrey came as an Engineering Student, and in 1980 she replied on behalf of Present Crewe “Men”. Robert A Riddles - who had begun at Crewe 71 years earlier - replied on behalf of Past Crewe Men to Sir Peter Parker, Guest of Honour on that occasion.

Nowadays the Crewe Dinner continues as one of the foremost occasions in the Railway Engineering Calendar, attended by Past and Present Crewe Men and their guests. The Pupil and Premium Apprenticeships have passed and indeed the last one to start, R C S (Michael) Low, died in April 1990. Nowadays, Graduates and Sponsored Students form the Present Crewe Men, although there had only been four a year in the years of BREL Ltd. Then as the Works ownership passed to ABB, then Bombardier Transportation UK Ltd and now Alstom, so some have continued to be trained at Crewe. At the Dinner are many in the Railway Industry, in Alstom, from other companies and from within the national rail organisations – train owners, train engineering and train operating companies and Network Rail alike.

It is thus both a reunion and an opportunity for Senior Managers in Engineering and the businesses of the Railways to meet the younger generation including those engineering graduates and sandwich course students in training, particularly at Crewe. It is unique in this way.

The Dinner has been fortunate to attract notable Principal Guests in recent years: Sir David Mitchell and Michael Portillo, then Ministers for Public Transport; Sir Robert Reid, then Chairman British Railways Board; Lord Prior, Chairman of GEC; John Welsby, Chairman of BRB; and in 1991 the Chairman of the British Railways Board, Sir Bob Reid.

Secretaries of the Dinner were several during the 1960s and 1970s: -Gordon O B Clarke, Tom Kerr and Andrew Steel. Stephen J Ollier then took over, and for 22 years Paul Ramsey was Secretary; followed by Kevin Clark. In January 2013 Wayne Jones became Secretary; and now Russell Birnie is the Secretary. A Committee meets several times a year at suitable locations. It used to be at a Works Manager’s office, an Area Maintenance Engineer’s office, in Crewe, or even, dare we say in Derby; a Network Rail office or in times past, a local hostelry. In recent years the Committee has met remotely by Zoom or other such platforms.

Models of Crewe built locomotives have graced the tables at many dinners and on the occasion of Sir Peter Parker’s visit, a large HST power car model was displayed, a sister of that in the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ HQ in London.

Locations of the Dinner in the 1960s were the Whitehall Court or the Café Royal. Over-Seas House, off St James’s Street, has been the venue now for many years recently.

A summer visit complemented the Dinner in 1987, the 150^th Anniversary of the coming of the railways to Crewe. After a visit round the Works, a party visited the Crewe Heritage Centre just two days before HM the Queen.

In 2021 a summer gathering was arranged at the Garden Railway of Adrian Shooter in Oxfordshire; and 2023 on the steam powered ‘Daniel Adamson’ on the River Weaver.

So, the Dinner now continues well into the 21st century and into its own 2nd century; and celebrates a wonderful tradition started by F W Webb himself.