A FORMER York Carriageworks employee told today how he feels he is living with a ticking asbestos timebomb.

Tony Feetenby, who worked as an apprentice at the train-making factory between 1974 and 1978, spoke out after recently reading again of a former workmate who had died of asbestos-related cancer.

"It's really a ticking timebomb," said Tony, 45, of Burdyke Avenue, Clifton, who reckons up to 20 of his former colleagues have died through asbestos over the years. "You hear about someone you knew there dying of it, and you think: Who is going to go next?

"I have had three chest colds this winter, and the third one hung around for six or seven weeks.

"I went to the doctor for antibiotics for a chest infection, but that didn't do the trick and so he put me on steroid tablets. He said he thought it was asthma, but there's no history of it in my family.

"It makes you wonder if there's something more to it. Every time you read about asbestos at the carriageworks you wonder."

Tony says some basic precautions were in place during his time at the factory in Holgate Road, but not enforced properly.

"There were notices up warning of the dangers, and we were given some very basic masks, but there was no attempt made to ensure people wore them. I was a young lad. I didn't know anything about asbestos. Nobody else wore them so I didn't wear them either.

"They really should have made us wear them and explained fully the dangers.

"In my work running a self-employed ceramic tiling business, I am very strict with my apprentices on health and safety. I make them wear goggles and ear muffs and so on."

Tony said he worked on the buffet cars, for which he recalls earning ten pence an hour extra. "That was a good sum in those days."

He now believes the extra pay was "danger money", for working in an area with greater amounts than normal amounts of asbestos material.

He stressed that he had no complaints about the training he received. "The York Carriageworks was probably the best institution in York for training people."

Updated: 12:18 Tuesday, April 15, 2003