CHRIS TITLEY meets a Yorkshire policeman who has been on the right side of the tracks for 30 years.

KEITH Groves has witnessed one murder, and was almost the victim of two more. He has escorted everything from bullion to royalty on the railways, and once arrested a singing star for pulling the communications cord.

His duties have taken him from one end of England to the other, via train, boat and, on a memorable occasion, aircraft carrier. He is a British Transport Policeman.

Or at least he was, until last week. That was when Mr Groves retired, aged 50, after 33 years service.

British Transport Police officers, responsible for policing the railways, docks and inland waterways, do not enjoy the high profile of their colleagues in the county constabularies. But they belong to just as long a tradition: officers oversaw excavations of the earliest railway lines in the 1820s. They exercise the same powers as other police, and the life is as varied, volatile and dangerous, as Mr Groves' experience proves. Twice he has evaded death.

Brought up in Staffordshire, Mr Groves' began his career as a 17-year-old cadet based at Birmingham New Street railway station. In those days he didn't even have a police radio: three sharp blasts on a whistle was the only way to summon help.

"Not long after I started a railway supervisor was shot dead in the car park. We eventually discovered a soldier had done it," he said.

"When he was interviewed he said his intention was to shoot a policeman. The only reason he shot the supervisor was because he saw two policemen standing together talking.

"If one of them had been on their own he would have shot them. I was one of the two PCs."

His next brush with death came closer still. It was at the height of the football violence of the Seventies and Eighties.

Fans have always travelled to fixtures by train, making stations potential flashpoints. Mr Groves was a sergeant at Leeds City Station when Leeds United travelled to play Barnsley in the Second Division. They took 4,000 fans with them by rail and fighting broke out between the rival supporters.

Mr Groves was slashed down his left arm with a Stanley knife. "I'd have been in real problems if I wasn't pulled out of the crowd," he said.

It was the nastiest moment in countless unpleasant footballing encounters. Speaking in the kitchen of his home in South Milford, near Sherburn-in-Elmet, Mr Groves recalled how times had changed.

In his first few years "we never had any real problems with football trains", he said. But in the Seventies, the hooligan element emerged, smashing up carriages and slashing seats. It was a while before the police adapted to match the threat.

"I could often police football trains going from Birmingham to Coventry on my own. When I got there, my back would be covered in spit."

A transport policeman's job is full of contrasts. One day he would be keeping the thugs in order on a football special; the next he might be escorting a member of the royal family from the royal train. Shortly before he retired he was introduced to the Queen at York Station, where he had worked as an Inspector for a few years.

Mr Groves also met some of the stars of sport and showbusiness during his time with the force.

"One of the people I met at Birmingham was Cassius Clay. I had to escort him through for his train. The station was packed out.

"He was a big bloke. I was in awe of him.

"I also met Bobby Moore, when he was at West Ham."

And then there's that singing star he brought to book.

"When I was at Coventry, I reported singer Kathy Kirby for prosecution. She'd pulled the communication cord.

"The train had no buffet car and the bloke she was with had got out to get a cup of tea. When the train pulled out he hadn't returned so she pulled the cord."

As celebrity arrests go it's not quite a Mick Jagger drugs bust, but it must have earned Mr Groves a certain cachet back at the nick.

After more than 30 years in the job, Mr Groves is a copper through and through. But it was not a job he had always wanted.

Although his grandfather was a policeman before the First World War, his father was a foundry worker. Mr Groves showed great talent for art at school - his grandfather was an artist and dramatist Richard Sheridan, who wrote The Rivals and School For Scandal, is an ancestor.

But he didn't pursue his artistic ambitions. Mr Groves' older brother was a policeman, and he followed him into the force, joining the transport division in the mistaken belief that the pay was better. He soon discovered it was a job he was good at, winning the Keith Winter Cup for best performance among his peer group.

And he progressed up the ranks over the years, becoming the Operations Chief Inspector for the North East in 1994.

Nothing prepared him for the darker side of the job. He vividly recalls dealing with his first fatality on the track near Coventry. Seeing what an express train can do to a human being was a sobering experience.

It was something he had to go through many times over the years, including his attendance at the fatal Nuneaton train crash in the 1970s.

Perhaps the worst experience, though, came when he was on duty at Leeds Railway Station on a busy Saturday night one November. "We were witness to a murder," he says, quietly. A group of youths were arguing near the station taxi rank. The next moment a fight broke out.

"When we rushed over there, one lad had collapsed. We couldn't find out what was wrong with him.

"We were aware something was seriously wrong with him and called an ambulance. I took my anorak and jumper off and used them to make him comfortable."

The young man died soon afterwards. It later emerged he had been stabbed with a penknife which punctured his heart.

"It was horrendous. That's a vision that lives with you forever. You never forget something like that.

"While you are trying to protect the scene and arrest everybody involved, you have got 60 people in the taxi queue shouting at you to leave him alone." He shakes his head.

Mr Groves will not miss this side of the job, although he'll miss the comradeship of his colleagues now he's retired. But there's little chance of him getting under the feet of wife Denise, who works at a doctors' surgery at Brayton.

He intends to work as a railway safety and security consultant, and write his memoirs. Then who knows - the British Transport Police might gain the attention they deserve.