Recreating the magic.

Thanks. To be frank, what it was was irrelevant - it was that plume of steam that really mattered!

 

I refer you to Tom's post immediately above, and ask how that creates the right kind of memories.

 

I got interested in trains mostly because as a kid in the 1970's, we didn't have a car so travelled fairly frequently to family via train, which led to the proper original Thomas books etc (long predating the current computer generated tat!). Can vaguely remember various things - most vivid one of my younger days being on a walk along the canal towpath around Bathampton and having to keep leaping up to the fence to watch the prototype HST set going back and forth on test. That may well have drifted away had the first couple of years at secondary school not been based right next to the main line out of Bath towards Bristol. So I then spent the next two years with every break time accompanied alternately by the full on scream of an HST pulling out or a 33 on full chat coming through with one of the Portsmouth trains. Obviously in between there was a full mix of other stuff (25's, 31's, 47's Peaks etc) with the odd rareity like the one and only 40 I ever saw. The real challenge was to try and bag a number whilst in lesson - you needed a stooge to engage the teacher at the right moment as you heard the sound approaching so you could quickly bob up and grab a quick look. So those are the sounds I feel a connection with in historic terms much as I love steam locos. Trouble is ,whilst we do have a good collection of older diesels around, they are pretty rare in service as the general public doesn't have the same connection with them and prefers the romance of steam. However you can catch glimpses - having the HST prototype at Didcot with its scream (not unaided by my younger son getting hold of the throttle and giving it a good shove!), watching at Pickering with a 45 ticking over waiting the off etc.

 

Something you've vividly highlighted there, James, is the view of a jamboree like FS's visit from the "business end".
I'd never thought about it before but bringing that globally renowned personality of the mechanical world into a platform crammed with people all craning for a view, must have been like facing the press night audience of a major West End production!

 

I agree absolutely. When I am rostered on a Gala, I only look at my own timings. I don't want to know what I am going to be passing, I want to be surprised! Just like it used to be. It's great to be rostered to a "local," parking in a siding here and there and just trainspotting again. I love it. Anorak? Damn right - and proud of it. Except now, I get to play with the machines and am part of the system.

 

Not a Victorian engine in this one but similar sort of thing, during the school summer holidays of 1999 one day my brother comes home on an August Wednesday or Thursday lunchtime saying he'd seen a 'grey 37 named Driver something' After a brief interrogation (times, location, names and livery) I realised this was 37412 Driver John Elliot on the 1007 New Street Holyhead. Looking at my watch I realised that if everything went to plan I could get down to Sandwell and Dudley and make the 1423 from New Street down to Crewe to meet it on the 1352 from Holyhead. After an anxious dash to Oldbury and an even more anxious check to make sure everything was running on time at the booking office I made into New Street at 1415. I can honestly say I don't remember too much about that trip to Crewe other than getting a nice photo of 47799 at Crewe Diesel Depot on the way in! Anyhow after half an hour of brisk walking about Crewe station trying to keep calm. At about 1556 a big grey 37 came into sight, judging from the camera shake on the pictures I have I must have been a mixture of excited and nervous! 37412 it was and for the 1st time since 1330 that afternoon I could calm down and breathe properly! Anyhow I got home at about 1810/15 just after my mum and dad had come home from work to be greeted with 'oh hello Matt, where have you been?' Me trying to be nonchalant 'just popped up to Crewe'. This was not even 20 years ago so no Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even a mobile phone, I do wonder about how many parents today would feel about their 15 year old just deciding to head off to a destination 50 odd miles and 2 counties away?

 

It doesn't have to be anything as big as a loco, I called into Umberleigh station in Devon in about 1970 and asked for a platform ticket,the guy told me I didn't need one but I wanted it to keep so he issued one, it was a Southern Railway ticket, that's magic!

 

I'm not quite 60, so as Tom says in post #39 above, my memories of pre-1968 steam are inevitably very vague and fuzzy, to say the least. However, I have enjoyed some utterly magic moments which have transported me back to an earlier era at least in spirit. Here are a few:-

This past September:- two marvellous but very different days. Canterbury and back with my wife on the British Pullman, with Clan Line doing the honours up front. Days like this aren't cheap, shall we say, but it certainly had a magic quality about it, particularly as some of my "vague and fuzzy" memories of steam feature Kent. (my grandfather was a driver, based at Ashford.) Less than a couple of weeks earlier, I had travelled all the way along the south coast by train from Polegate to Swanage and back. It may seem almost blasphemous to some on this forum to mention a Crompton in the same paragraph as Clan Line, but the moment when D6515 swung away from the Weymouth line at Worgret Junction and noisily dug into the climb up to Furzebrook was pure magic - recalling the 1970s and 1980s and also a fulfilment of something I had been waiting to do for many years, ever since I first became acquainted with the Swanage Railway during my two years at Moorlands Bible College, near Bournemouth.

My most recent trip to the Isle of Wight Steam Railway - in August 2010 - had a magic quality about it. The ferry from Portsmouth to Ryde, the ancient 1938 tube stock from Pier Head to Smallbrook Junction, along with the fairly unmodernised infrastructure and then Calbourne hauling a train of ancient stock on the IOWSR. Not quite what it was like in the 1960s, which I've only seen in photos anyway, but pretty close in many ways and still a wonderful experience.

Another magical not involving any trains occurred in November 1983. I was staying at a hotel in Tunbridge Wells, having been booked on a training course by my employer. After the evening meal, I wandered down to Tunbridge Wells West Station. It was a total time-warp - old BR(S) green signs both on the platforms and in the booking hall, semaphore signalling and so on. Basically untouched since the last BR4 tanks were withdrawn on the closure of the Cuckoo Line in 1965 and the dark evening added to the magic.

A non-Southern wonderful moment was "Number Nine"'s run from King's Cross to Peterborough in 1994. If my memories of BR(S) steam are vague and fuzzy, my memories of BR(E) steam are totally non-existent! No chance of getting a ticket as it sold out very quickly, but I had arranged to visit a friend who lived near King's Lynn, so made sure I went from King's Cross and arrived in time to see the amazing sight of an A4 in the station. The atmosphere was just incredible. I caught an EMU to Hitchin and waited for 60009 to come through before proceeding via Cambridge to Norfolk. Another incredible moment as it passed through. Overhead wires notwithstanding, it gave me a glimpse of something I never saw, and I can now understand why LNER fans are so passionate about their pacifics!

My all-time favourite has to be my unexpected main line steam trip in October 1986, when a series of Salisbury-Yeovil runs took place, hauled by Clan Line. Once again, no chance of a seat as they sold out so quickly but I went over to take a photo. Not being able to drive at the time, I took my bike on the train to Gillingham and cycled to the bridge just east of Buckhorn Weston Tunnel. To have taken a picture of a "Merchant Navy" in the sun on this beautiful line, complete with the correct headcode discs for the route was something very special in and of itself, but then to travel back from Gillingham to Salisbury on 35028's return run because a "50" had broken down on the then single track at Axminster, thus heavily delaying eastbound services, was the icing on the cake. I have been further and faster behind main line steam since, but being able to travel behind one of my favourite engines so unexpectedly - and on a normal ticket to boot - really is as good and as magical as it gets.

 

Another "magic" moment which transcended time, was in about 1994, there was a series of events organised by NSE on the Folkestone harbour branch. I didn't attend, but Brittannia and a pair of Standard 4 tanks (80079/80080) were involved.
Someone I knew at Tonbridge depot tipped me off that on the Sunday night, the Std.4s would be taking the ECS back to London, and I might want to take a look.
Hildenborough seemed a good place, on the 6 mile climb to Sevenoaks tunnel, and as an afterthought I took a recorder with me.
So at about midnight, with 2 other random guys, we stood on the footbridge and waited. I'd never seen a steam locomotive working really hard before, so didn't know what to expect.
I remember there was a moon that night, and it was very still, so we could easily hear the "crow" as they left Tonbridge, and then it began, the sound rising and falling as it built, reverberating across the still night, faster and faster up the 1 in 122 until 2 headlights appeared in the distance, and as the roar became closer, 2 vertical orange flares. By now the noise was a pummelling of the senses. The 2 tanks were going for it big time, full chat in the middle of the night.
And then they were through in a blur of glints, orange smoke and flying rods, shaking the bridge and shooting fire into the night sky, doing about 60; the darkened carriages followed along with a clattering of cinders, and and as we stood letting our eyes adjust from the dazzling, I said to the chap next to me "did you see that!?"
"See it?" He replied, showing me the smouldering holes in his coat...
I've still got that recording somewhere, on an old cassette.

 

John, your post is terrific, and I envy you that trip behind Clan Line on a BR ticket!
Reminded me of a couple of things, too: West Station at TW I only knew after closure, but what a wedding cake it was! (Still is). I'm certain that the booking Hall remained gas lit until the end.
Secondly the IOW- I remember as an 8 year old, crossing on the PS Ryde, it must have been its last year in service, but it gleamed, and best of all, the engineer brought me down onto the engine room bridge, and under his careful instruction, operating big polished levers while the huge con rods leapt and curtseyed underneath the steel platform. Imagine such a thing happening nowadays! H&S apoplexy!
Then there was the train at Pier Head, just plain rail blue, but full of trippers, all loudly singing "We've got a ticket to Ryde!"
On the return journey we took the tram, which I think was condemned at the end of that year, so very lucky to have been on it.
I recall standing on the end balcony between the cars, looking down at the coupled ends pitching and swaying, and the sea glittering below the flitting girders.

 

Try Statfold Barn! You really have no idea what's coming next.

I agree, it's hard to get that magic feeling these days. Gala days on the big lines are the nearest thing, but I always spoil it by studying the working timetable first.

 

The best days for magic on preserved lines, are weekdays in term time., at one of the smaller stations. Kids at school, grown-ups at work. Not much variety on the line but, that is how it was in them olden days. Perhaps just 1 loco rostered. That flurry of activity when it calls then, just the birds singing or sheep bleating. Perfect.

 

I just love the anticipation, quiet and clam one minute and then the signal drops or a bell tings. Often a distant whistle is heard and then you might hear the exhaust and then steam through the trees....what will it be?

 

6024 on a driver experience! Happened to me once at the SVR!

 

Trainspotting at Stoke, Saturday, 18th April 1964 because I couldn't afford the fare to Crewe that week, I was enjoying the usual fare of DMUs, Class 40s, 4Fs, 8Fs, Black 5s and 9Fs on the endless procession of coal trains, when, suddenly, I heard a strange whistle. I saw the signals were off for the northbound through line, looked south and saw an unbelievable silhouette. It was an A3 with German type smoke deflectors, which I, along with most of my mates, thought were the coolest engines on the planet. As it approached, my heart beating 19 to the dozen, I saw it was 60051 "Blink Bonny," my very favourite A3. I don't know why; it just was. I was 14 - who knows? An A3 at Stoke? nobody believed me at school on the Monday - until "Railway Magazine" came out later and carried details of the trip. I was high as a kite all weekend.
Magic? The view of that A3 at the south end of Stoke's overall roof is as vivid today as it was in 1964!

 

Staverton is nice for that.

 

but how do we go about re=creating it?

 

Yes, its a wonderful place. If you could bottle that atmosphere and sell it....
Wittersham Road and Carrog are personal favourites, and Chelfham will be if I live that long....

 

Standing on the lineside at Fosse Road on an October evening in 1978. A perfectly still night punctuated by the occasional birdsong. In the distance came an engine whistle and the sound of a train. Slowly but surely the sound gained in intensity until eventually, in a shower of sparks and fire, 7818 and 5900 came storming by on their way back to Didcot.
December 1978. Riding behind 4472 returning a SLOA Santa Steam Special from Sellafield to Carnforth. The train has just come off the Barrow avoider at Dalton Jct. and is about to tackle the eastbound climb on frosty rails. The A3 had to fight for every inch of that climb in a cacophony of steam and sound.
Wind forward some 35 years or so to Oberohn in the Werratal. A cold, completely still morning with the early autumn mist giving way to brilliant sunshine. Down in the valley a train can be heard forging its way up the climb. A pair of 3-cylinder Class 44 "Jumbos" with a monster freight in tow. The sound builds and builds until with a shattering roar the train storms past up the climb towards Eisenach.
Long may spectacles such as this continue.