Adrian Vaughan was born in Reading in 1941, and grew up in touch with the GWR and its nationalized successor. He learned signalling routine in 1950 and became a volunteer porter at Challow station in 1953, where he learned to drive the shunting engine and the intracacies of the signalling regulations. After four and a half years in the Army he became a paid porter at Challow and went on to be a signalman at Uffington in 1961. He married Susan in 1972 and departed the modernizing railways in 1975.
