Mexborough & Swinton Times – Saturday 14 November 1942
Globe Trotter
Mr. Harry L. Sheard, who recently took over as stationmaster at Conisbrough, has spent the whole of his working life in the railway service. In 32 years he has seen service in goods, passenger and operating departments.
For ten years before coming to Conisbrough he had the unique experience of being stationmaster of two stations at the earns time when he had charge of Ingrow L. and N.E. and Ingrow L.M. and a stations, which are five minutes’ walk from each other.
Mr. Sheard has more than one hobby, but the one that claims first place in his affections is travel. Since he left the Royal Flying Corps after the last war he has spent his annual holiday outside this country, and claims that there is not a country in Europe that he has not visited. He has made a host of friends in his travels and right up to the commencement of this war he was in communication with them, but some, unfortunately, are now in enemy countries, though Mr. Sheard hopes to renew the acquaintance in happier times to come.
One friend was the stationmaster in Amsterdam, and Mr. Sheard understands that he was conscripted in the Dutch Army. He made another friend of a Danish doctor and corresponded with him right up to the time when the Germans went into that country. He speaks very highly of the hospitality he has enjoyed from the people In Poland and Czecho-Slovakia, and since the present war started he had worked hard for the refugee movement and he is a member of the Anglo-Polish and Anglo-Czech. Societies, and has on many occasions been pleased to entertain Czech and Polish soldiers on leave in this country.
Mr. Sheard anxious to keep this work going while he is at Conisbrough and intends to make contact with the nearest group. He has also been keenly interested in Toc H since the last war, and became an active worker while he was stationed at Keighley, and hopes to be able to continue the association.
Asked how he thought the Continental train services compared with our own Mr. Sheard said he thought they were excellent. They were equal in speed but perhaps lacked the polished finish which our own rolling stock has.
Mr and Mrs Sheard have a daughter, Margaretha, aged 11, and although her age has not permitted her to be travelling as long as her parents, she is almost as much travelled as they are, for, the places she has visited are Belgium, Luxemburg, Alsace- Lorraine, France and the Riviera, the Italian Lakes and Riviera and Switzerland. Her autograph book is full of foreign manuscript, among which are the signatures of Rawicz and Landauer, who are often heard on the radio programmes. Just before her sixth birthday, her father started a diary of her travels and now she is old enough she keeps the diary herself, and an interesting book it is. Very neatly and properly tabulated are the names of all the places she has visited, all the tunnels she has passed through with their lengths, and other interesting data, but the most interesting thing she had to show our representative was her collection of model trains.
The collection is very neatly laid out and covers the whole floor space of a very large room and contains replicas of all types of rolling stock of the many countries she has visited. In addition there are models of the Pennsylvania Railroad, New York Central, American Union Tank Cars, loco and goods shed., with crane and wharf, turn-tables, water columns, level crossings, breakdown tool van and many of the familiar advertising signs one sees during a train Journey In this country.
Margaretha attends Mexborough Secondary School and during the short period she has been there she has come to be known as “Christopher Columbus,” a title she has no doubt earned because of her globe-trotting. Her father is known to railway workers up and down the country as “The News of the World.”