Blacktown Retirement Presentations

Over the past 12 months, Blacktown has seen a number of Train Crew hand in their keys and retire. On Friday December 2^nd at the annual Christmas Drinks, we raised our glasses to four of our longer serving members of the Blacktown Train Crew family in recognition and celebration of their careers and achievements.

Drivers Mark Phillips, Phillip Robinson and Keith McMahon as well as Guard Les McCabe all have between 32 and 47 years of service within the varying entities that have resulted in the current version of Sydney Trains and, when you combine all of that time between them, they have racked up an amazing 152 years and a number of months of service. Here’s a brief rundown on their railway careers:

Keith McMahon (47yrs service) was the first to finish up in January 2022. He started his career with the railways in 1974  when he wanted to become a Train Driver but, being too young at the time, he was offered the role of telephone boy until he was old enough to enter Loco as a Cleaner and progress through the ranks to become a Class 5 Engineman at Enfield. In 1996, he transferred across to the ETR at Blacktown where he became a Driver Trainer and remained until he decided to retire in January 2022.

Over his time on the railway, Keith was (and still is) heavily involved in both union work (AFULE & RTBU) and took on the arduous task of coordinating the various OH&S (later WHS) committees throughout the NSW rail network.

Phillip (Phil) Robinson (32yrs service) started his railway career in May of 1990 and holds the claim to fame of being in one of the first direct “off the street” Drivers schools. These modern Drivers were affectionately referred to as “test tube Drivers” and, over time, wore this title with honour.

Phil spent 58 weeks of intensive training, both at Petersham and on the road with Driver Trainers and was issued with his Certificate of Competency in early 1991 where he took up as a Driver at Central. In the year 2000, he decided to try his hand at Intercity Driving and transferred to Eveleigh where he remained for 2 ½ years before accepting a transfer back to the ETR at Blacktown in July 2002 where he remained for the next 20 years.

In July of 2022, Phil made the hard decision to leave the job he loved and took an early retirement but as his home backs onto the Main Western Line, he will never be too far away from the memories of his time on the job.

Mark Phillips’ (34yrs service) first experience with the railways was sitting the “perception test” at Petersham in November 1987. After a time, he entered the Petersham college in April of 1988 for 3-4 weeks before taking up as a fireman/second person at Lithgow where he remained until April of 1990 when he decided to transfer onto the ETR.

After 6 months of training at Petersham and on road with Flemington Driver Trainer Laurie Camilleri, Mark took up at Central in October of 1990 where he immediately was issued a line on the roster due to the Driver shortage at the time.

Around 9 years after taking up at Central, Mark transferred to Blacktown in November 1999, ironically mainly covering the line of Keith McMahon who was constantly off roster arguing with management over the rights of Train Drivers.

Mark’s plans in retirement are fairly simple – spend time with his wife and family with a move down to Victoria.

Les McCabe (39yrs service) had 2 stints working on the railways. Between 1967-69, he worked as a Call Boy at Hornsby Car Sheds but a railway career didn’t appeal to him at the time so he left to see where things would take him.

In 1983, fate led him back into the railways and Hornsby as a station assistant where he spent 3 years until he tired of that and decided to transfer across to the freight area as a Guard in 1986 where he remained for the next 10 years.

In 1996, he transferred to the ETR as a Guard and once again found himself at Hornsby before transferring to Central and then finally to his final destination of Blacktown where he saw out the remainder of his career at Blacktown.

By October 2022, it had all become too much for Les and he felt he needed a less stressful life and made the decision to retire. His future plans are to travel a bit and just enjoy the quiet life.

This is what 152+ years of service gathered together looks like at Blacktown (left to right):