Recreating the magic.

Moonlight Silhouette by Arle Images, on Flickr

Still beyond most modern cameras, but the idea is there!

 

but that's the magic for you, for me it was Hydraulics and for others it will be 56's perhaps or AC electrics, or HSTs. It doesn't matter, it's the thrill of not knowing what you may see although I take your point that some lines are very sterile nowadays. I'd suggest if you sat somewhere where there's a good throughput of freight, you'd capture something of the magic.

 

I have mentioned this event somewhere but its worth repeating. The old Euston at the end of steam. Station pilot a scruffy standard 3. Anouncer "the xx from yy is reported 20 minutes late at Rugby - and in the same breath - is now approaching platform ? The train rolled down the hill double headed by two ex works LMS type 3s. The station pilot shuffled across the throat and attached to the now ECS . I dont know if it was pre arranged or just unspoken bravado. Whistles were exchanged and the 3 locos lifted the train out of the station in a cachonity of vertical exhausts more in the fashion of a Watford electric. That memory will allways stay with me

 

Hmm I'm not so sure. I know exactly the magic you're talking about though, it does occasionally happen on the GWSR. I remember for me it was in my first year of volunteering, so about 4 years ago aged 14; it was an October day and the first time I'd worked the whole day rather than just mornings. It was about 6pm and only 2 of us left in the workshops just tidying up. The service trains had finished some time ago but out of the darkness with a dim oil lamp on the front and a glowing fire was Foremarke Hall on its last trip before overhaul (complete with chalk marks) with an ECS delivering carriages to Winchcombe for the November shutdown period. Watching it steam past in the dark stood in the four foot of an adjacent siding was magical.

And yet I was sat in Sheffield station for about an hour in the evening coming home what with delayed trains, yet despite all the movements nothing interested me at all, certainly no magic!

Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

 

Err, to the contrary...

Noel

 

I have friends who rave about East Mids 158's, yup seriously... Rolls eyes. I've been lucky enough to grow up with proper loco hauled trains and having Birmingham New Street a 10 minute train ride away when I was younger I've been lucky enough to go to places like Newcastle, Glasgow, Penzance and Ramsgate on a proper train. Much as they don't do much for me there are generation who have some affection for second and third gen units. Anyhow back to the 'magic', in 2015 at the SVR's diesel gala I was behind Deltic 9 with a friend who's a bit older and our good lady's, we had the usual storm out Bewdley past the Safari Park and up to the tunnel where we slowed down just outside, once inside Deltic 9 was opened right up! The noise! The smoke! The Sound! For a split second I was back to being 15 and storming out of New Street to Holyhead on the boat train again, I mentioned this to my mate on way back to compo and he said he'd gone back to the late '70s with Deltic 3 on the trans-Pennines! Anyway when the girls asked why were so happy we said something like, we've found out time travel is possible, without a tardis!

 

Did you pay a visit to the Sheffield Tap Alex? When Mrs D6968 was living with her sister in Sheffers And I used to visit, I always used to say my train was 20mins later than it was so I could have a pint in there! This was also after I'd changed at Derby and few in The Brunswick and the Alex! (Both are worth a visit, plenty of railway history on the walls to have a good look at, plus the cab of 37411 is in the beer garden at the Alex!)

 

Marvellous picture! Just like Zec's "By Night Train to Scotland" poster for the LNER

 

The old Euston was an incredible place, the original station with all the add ons as traffic expanded with no thought to harmonising the architecture. The long platform 1 was where we all congregated giving a view right across the layout to see such things as Duchesses trying to find their feet getting away up Camden bank with enormous trains and a 2-6-4T hammering away at the back. there weren't many micky mouse trains back then and the Liverpools often loaded to 15 or 16 coaches.
I remember going to the Cavern Club in early 1963, three of us caught the 8.30 am to Lime St so we could do Edge Hill, Speke Junction and Bank Hall during the day. By that time motive power was an underpowered EE Type 4 but this marvel of modern technology succumbed at Bletchley to be replaced by a grubby Black 5 which was flogged all the rest of the way losing time but what a run. Unfortunately for the hapless passengers I think it was so absorbed in moving it's huge train that there was insufficient steam to heat it. The group playing at the Cavern were the Undertakers if anyone remembers them. Happy days!

 

For me, lastingly, what came first was the aftermath. Too young to remember Beeching, my introduction to the magical world of railways came one afternoon in the mid 1970s. Pausing to look through a pair of white, peeling gates where trains would cross no more. Isfield.
Through the Rosebay and brambles, the station building slept in the afternoon sun, it's paint bleached and peeling, the empty trackbed saying "come in and discover". I think I was entranced from that moment.
Back then as I'm sure most of us remember, the closures were still fairly recent, the scars still fresh in the landscape, though just beginning to soften with nature. That summer, along with a mate of mine, and armed only with a one inch OS map, we set about walking as many of the old Sussex lines as we could, and every one was a voyage of discovery.
Empty booking halls with their boarded-up windows, the glass crunching under our echoing feet as we explored. Green and cream paint, peeling and bleached on the woodwork, signal posts to be climbed, the smell of nettles, the dark, dripping tunnels, and always those grass-grown cuttings disappearing mysteriously around the next curve and then the next, the ox eye daisies nodding in the breeze as if to say "come on- there's more!"
So for me the infrastructure came first, and 10 years too late at that. The trains themselves came later with the first visits to the Bluebell line. But they really were just the cherry on the cake....
So now for me "The Magic" is somewhere like Kingscote on a hot summer afternoon between trains, with the smell of creosote rising off the sleepers. Or maybe Horsted Keynes on a damp and misty evening after dark, the ting of a block bell and the chatter of a signal wire. Trains don't have to be present at all.
The magic is there, nonetheless.

 

That is a cracking post, very well put. Nice one Sir.

 

I remember the late 70's = early 80's well.

In many ways the WSR captures a lot of it although its less down at heel than it was but trundling through the countryside in a MK1 with semaphore signals brings a lot if it back even if what's at the front (usually) goes chuff chuff not boggler bogler

The railtour Pathfinder ran about 14 years ago to Dunster by Candlelight with Royal Army Ordnance Corps (My fathers old unit) racing across the Somerset Levels as the sun set then climbing up to Crowcombe certainly took me back many years.

 

Thank you for your kind comment, Matt. As you can probably tell, its stuff close to my heart.

 

In the Woking office on Friday, and looked towards the railway across the rooftops. Suddenly, a plume of steam moving from left to right. Couldn't see the train, but just the sense of movement and of surprise.

 

That depends on what you mean. I don't share your memories, least of all of steam.

However, what does matter is that new, good, evocative, memories are created that inspire future generations to love railways. Achieve that, and anything is possible. Fail to achieve it, and nothing is possible.

 

An interesting thread. I guess for me, one day I'll be able to stand at Rothley or Quorn to see the preserved HST set (presumably a production loco at one end and the prototype at the other) roar past on a 60mph demonstration train, and be reminded of being 7 and standing on Yatton platform as the Valentas screamed through!

 

that's it exactly, that's what today's up and coming railways need to create. I've not a clue how they do it

 

It was a Black 5, a rare cop at Woking but it happened twice past week an once the week before.

 

I'm mid (ahem) forties; my earliest memories of railways were in the mid to late 1970s, and it was in the 1980s that I started to take a more serious interest in what I saw when travelling. I remember 4VEPs and CIGs on our local line, trips to Reading were the closest to seeing loco-hauled trains. I must admit, I have absolutely no desire to recreate any of the "magic" of that era. Even then, when I travelled round BR, my main interest was trying to see remnants of the steam-era railway still in situ. I wish now I'd taken in more, but it wasn't the modern railway that held my interest even then.

To have reliable first-hand memories of pre-preservation steam era railways on the mainline, you likely have to be about sixty or older. So I think if we base our product around recreating the memories of that demographic, we are basically locking ourselves into a declining market that will be more or less entirely gone within twenty years. Not to say it isn't important now, but that demographic is of declining importance, so we have to find ways of keeping the product relevant to a newer generation. (And I include within that the "product" both for the travelling public and enthusing new generations of volunteers who aren't necessarily involved as a way of recreating their youth).

Since this seems to be a bit of reminiscence thread, I reckon I've done 50-odd days this year, but four stick in my mind as being really memorable or enjoyable in different ways.

- Firing "Flying Scotsman" on the first morning of the Flying Scotsman gala: an unfamiliar engine (and a big one, which I don't generally prefer); huge profile; two very different train weights on our two trips (140 tons, then 280-odd); just trying not to stuff up. "Just do familiar things in an unfamiliar environment". It worked, and was a huge buzz afterwards, but nerve racking. Once we got past the advance starter at Sheffield Park on our first trip, it all started to become more relaxed as we got out onto the line on our own, away from crowds, and just started to slip into the routine of firing the loco, watching out for signals and so on.

- Running Foreman on the second day of the Flying Scotsman gala: six engines in steam to be prepared and got off shed on the dot; crews and yard staff to keep tabs on, and a yard partly open to the public with various attractions going on, so not only doing things under a greater than normal degree of scrutiny, but in more constrained space once the barriers went up to segregate the "working" and " public" parts of the yard. Oh, and did I mention that that was my first day as RF on my own after qualifying for the role? Talk about in at the deep end! High stress, but a massive adrenaline rush when I could hand over to my relief with the report being all engines off shed on time, yard tidy and everything in order.

- On the Coal Tank at the Branch Line Gala. Book on at Sheffield Park, ride the cushions to Horsted Keynes to relieve a crew there. Then faced with the 3 miles of 1 in 75 to the tunnel on an unfamiliar engine that was "cold", having been sat still for an hour and a quarter. Just a lovely engine, and a lovely feeling at the end of the afternoon to fire a nice round trip with 140-odd tons behind on a little loco.

- And finally, a normal service 2 day on the H class. For some reason, the cleaner was a no show, so it was just driver and fireman: prep the engine, three round trips, he drove, I fired and we just had a lovely time together without ever having to worry too much about what the other person would do. It's days like that that maybe give you a little insight into what the day-to-day would have been like in the past.

Four very different days, all slightly out of the ordinary, but all in their way "magic".

Tom

 

One bit of magic that has gone forever is the atmosphere of the working steam locomotive depot. Didcot and Buckley Wells are as near as you can get but are too clean and ordered, they also don't have that many locos to recreate the sulphurous atmosphere, particularly on a Sunday afternoon when engines were being lit up for the weeks workings. Today you also pay good money to visit these places, not the same as the adrenalin rush as you overcame the obstacles to getting in and that ever present fear of the dreaded 'oi you' from somebody in charge. Amazingly that didn't happen too often. Perhaps when the GC build their new depot they should build it as a typical semi derelict British shed of the 50/60s!