First rail memories

I hadn't heard the Fkawi joke for years until last week and now you repeat it. Probably hear it again in a few days.
As to earliest memory, held up by Dad and peering over the parapet of the Fox Lane, Palmers Green bridge at the approaching train which was almost certainly an N2 hauling some quad-arts.

 

Roxborough bridge, Harrow. Watching a down steam hauled passenger train on the GC & Met Joint, about 1960.

 

On a school trip to Murrayfield, which happens to be adjacent to 64B Haymarket, for a rugby international, coming off the shed were 60004 William Whitelaw and 62690 The Lady of the Lake coupled together. You might think that would make me a LNER fan but no LMS turned out to be my favourite.

 

Playschool in the early 1990's in the old station masters house, I remember being lifted up to watch the class 411 (4cep) go by about 1 meter away by the nannies.

Must of really planted a seed.

 

Being taken by my dad to Stoke station to watch the trains in about 1962. Then a couple of years later we moved to a house in Meir where I could see the Stoke to Derby line from my bedroom window.

 

IIRC, it was for the 100th anniversary.

 

Haywards Heath down platform around 1963/4 waiting for the Seaford service to holiday in a caravan at Cuckmere Haven. Having just climbed the biggest staircase ever entered a new world. Studying a green emu in the up platform, vaguely remember brass handrails and BR coat of arms and black bits underneath, nearly shat myself when a non-stop roared through between me and the green train. Can't remember any more of that encounter.

 

The street in which I was born was wedged between the Wolverhampton to Walsall line which ran across the end of our back garden, and the Wolverhampton avoiding line, which ran along the back of the houses on the other side of the street, I only have hazy memories as I was only three when we moved but I do have memories of mainly goods trains going past the back of our house, including my dad pointing out a "New class 56"

 

Being taken to Freshfield station to watch the Southport-Euston through coaches, pulled by what I now know will have usually been a 2-6-4T, going through the station. I was 5. Used to insist on going onto the footbridge to stand above the track as the train started off... All stopped, of course, once the electrics started in 1966, & the through service was replaced by a DMU from Southport to Liverpool Lime Street...

 

Since the OP didn't state standard gauge, my earliest memory was a miniature train ride circa 1959, when I would have been 4. Confirmed by this photo taken by my father. Anybody care to ID the location and locomotive? (No prizes!)

 

Be about 1970 - (before I started infants school), and my mother walked me to Yatton station on Bristol Weston line and a dirty two tone green Hymek came through on a vac fitted freight heading toward Bristol - 45 years later I can still run a mental vision of it in my minds video player!

Paul

 

Lancaster Castle Station around 1956 I guess. Waiting for an electric train to Morecambe, when a steam hauled passenger service drew into the adjacent platform 4. My Dad took me to have a closer look at the locomotive and I remember him telling me it's name was 'Blackpool.'

 

All one journey from Gravesend to Bridport in 1963. I was 3, remember green EMU, Slatted floor of underground unit of Baker loo line set and being in the first coach at Paddington. Loco set back onto the stock whilst father was pouring tea from a flask, tea went everywhere, bloody gas works railway drivers!