My beloved uncle the transport visionary

Tim Baynes was a transport visionary and a campaigner for social justice who helped develop the work of industrial chaplains.

Tim Baynes was an industrial chaplain for more than 25 years.

He was also, alas, one of the many victims of Covid-19, and passed away last week in hospital after contracting the virus, aged 91.

But most of all Tim was a much-loved uncle, with whom I have felt a special affinity because he baptised me, I was a page boy at his wedding and then he kindly agreed to come out of retirement to marry me and my wife 17 years ago.

This column is a tribute to you, Tim, for your wise counsel over many years, in providing important and relevant perspectives from your direct experience of the world of work.

The Manchester Metrolink which Tim helped to shape. Picture: Wikimedia Commons.

However, as is often the case, you learn far more about a person after they are gone than in life, and I am indebted to Tim for recording his career in a memoir, My Journey, kindly forwarded this week by my aunt.

In it, he related how, as a curate in Nottinghamshire, he become increasingly concerned that the Church of England was too middle class and didn’t appeal to working people, while also ignoring people’s working lives.

It prompted Tim to become involved in industrial mission work in 1967.

The first five years were based at an inner-city parish in Manchester, but the role continued until his retirement more than 25 years later.

Tim was assigned to the then British Rail, visiting major stations, and locomotive and parcels depots. It was a time of increasing strife between management and unions on the railways and in wider industry.

Tim’s insights included the importance of good management to achieve co-operative staff, observing that a bad manager could prompt resistance and conflict. He wrote: “People would often say to me ‘We never see the boss’. What they wanted was recognition.” It’s a comment still oft repeated to me from within today’s rail industry.

Tim developed a wider interest in public transport which led him to becoming chair of a new body, the Greater Manchester Transport Consultative Committee, formed to give a collective voice for bus and train passengers to pedestrians, cyclists, and older and disabled people.

He recalled it identified the “basic injustice” of motorists benefiting from improvements at the expense of those using public transport.

The body’s work included considerable input to the design of Manchester’s tram network, which opened in 1992 and whose success paved the way for trams to return to Edinburgh more than two decades later.

While the church has scaled back from industrial outreach, a little-known organisation continues to offer a listening ear to both staff and passengers on the rail network.

Railway Mission is a Christian charity, whose chaplains - three of whom cover Scotland - provide “face-to-face friendship and an opportunity to talk about problems and explore solutions”.

Their work involves visiting remote stations and signal boxes where workers may not see anyone else that day.

The chaplains offer impartial, confidential support - sometimes just giving a person a chance to vent their frustrations. Activities include “Conversation Cafes” to help suicide prevention.

In mourning Tim’s passing, I will think of my uncle’s compassion and love of the railways living on through the service the Mission provides.

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