Joseph Weston, nephew to Zacharias who you can read about here and also a railway employee, sounds like a man you could trust. In 1935 The Hastings and St Leonards Observer reported that he found an abandoned attache case whilst patrolling the line between Etchingham and Roberstbridge stations and handed it in. It was reported that the case belong to Alice Cole, district nurse for the area, who had had it stolen from her car. The car was parked two doors up from Robertsbridge Station. Interesting for me, my grandparents, my mother and my aunt were living in that house and they were all great friends of hers and this is the first time I had heard what her first name was!!!
Joseph is a first cousin twice removed to me and was born in April 1878 and died in 1972, another long living Weston! His parents were John Weston and Mary Ann Humphrey. He married Mary Maria Relf in 1904 and they had 7 children; 6 girls and 1 boy. The men were well and truly outnumbered!!
In 1901 he was a platelayer working on the railways and living at Etchingham and could well have been working in the same gang as is uncle Zacharias. In the 1939 Register, at the start of World War 2, he was recorded as a railway lengthsman and living at Rother View in Etchingham.
Joseph Weston is the man on the left. In the front row next to him is Ernie Wells, his son in law. On the opposite end on the right is Farmer Croft. On the back row on the far right is Will Eastwood. Can you identify the others? (Credit to Etchingham in Bye-gone Days Flickr site here.)
Platelayers and lengthsmen were responsible for a section of railway track and it could be dangerous work. They needed to be careful they were standing clear from passing trains and not slip onto the tracks when working or not get crushed between carriages or trucks if stationery trains started moving.