PUFFIN’ BILLY

During the heyday of Liverpool Docks, and when the overhead railway was at it’s busiest, one of the many interesting sights was the small steam engines that worked between the huge variety of ships and the warehouses, via the ‘Dockers Umbrella’ as it became known, carrying all sorts of goods. The rail tracks were like those which carry trams, set level with the cobble stones, they criss crossed all over the dock landscape, and running the length of each dock, enabled the huge ‘nodding’ cranes (mounted on the flat roofs of the dockside ‘sheds’) to load and unload very quickly and efficiently. These ‘Puffin’ Billies’ made a loud noise which was accompanied by a continuous ‘clang clang’ of a brass bell which often startled the many carthorses as they also carried and delivered huge cotton wool bales to the warehouses. These were outside the docks and were twenty floors or more high, no windows and served by a thick rope hoist. The dock walls, some twenty foot high and made of granite stones, were built by Italian POWs during the First World War. The railway was alas demolished in 1956 as the docks slowly lost the customers and business.

By Edward Holdsworth

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