Trainspotting

Apropos of bugger-all really, It occurs to me that it's 60 years today since my first official trainspotting day, spent a 20 minute bus trip from home, at the long-closed (even then) Longhirst Station on the ECML.

Not a good day to start. There'd been a freight train derailment further north at Belford, so traffic was severely limited. Only 3 steam seen all day from 09.3o to 5pm; 60051 Blink Bonny, local K1 62022 on a coal train and as I got on the bus home, the crossing gates closed for 60127 Wilson Worsdell on a northbound passenger.

 

My Dad used to take myself and brother to Bescot, Saltley and Albion Gulf which was just down the hill from where we lived in the late 80’s and early ‘90s to ‘just have a look’.
So I’d ‘copped’ a fair few 31’s, 37’s, 43’s, 47’s and Leccy’s at the grand old age of 5

Always remember seeing a Bescot 31 going past The Gulf in civil engineers at about the age of 7 or 8 and it looked and sounded bloody awesome!

 

I can remember my first trip at the age of 9 with a friend and his older brother. It was the second footbridge on the London side of Bromley South Station. Both those bridges were crowded with kids every weekend.
One thing that puzzled me for years was when one lad shouted out , ‘it’s the Arrer’ before a gleaming 70004 and the Pullmans came into view. Later I realised he must have recognised the Brit’s chime whistle.
Tomorrow I will be out photographing a Merchsnt Navy on some of those same Pullmans, who would have thought that possible.

 

I remember cycling to Cramlington from Blyth over 60 yrs ago.Dam Dykes crossing and signal box was a favourite haunt,the crossing is still there and I cross it quite often.
Another favourite was Plessey Checks, where there was also a crossing and signal box,great days. I must have seen Miles Beevor a hundred times lol

 

You started about the same time as me. Just New England B1s and 9Fs through my local by then.

 

The only time I saw Miles Beevor was when it turned up at Blyth Scrapyard. It had gone to Scotland 6 months before I started, but hearing some of my mates at school talking about it and other namers that they'd seen at the weekend or the previous evening was one of the things that inspired me to go and see for myself. Miles Beevor was one of two names that stood out for me. Dante was the other, although it was long gone.They all agreed they were sick of the sight of Miles Beevor and Guillemot. Guillemot was another I saw only at the scrapyard, being cut up alongside Empire of India at Darlington Works.

Your reference to Plessey Checks reminds me of an occasion in 1964 when I was on the bus from Ashington with my trainspotting mate going to Newcastle to watch the football. We were sitting on the top deck of the No 3 and as we approached the overbridge just south of Plessey Checks, 60024 Kingfisher appeared out of nowhere and passed north light engine. 60 years later I still recall that occasion each time I drive under that bridge in my car.

Newcastle won too.

 

My Dad took me trainspotting. About one minute's walk from home was the station footpath on the cutting side above Bushey and Oxhey (as it then was) station. Also within walking distance were Bushey troughs. He also took me to a field near Radlett on the MML and one near Hadley Wood on the ECML. I duly ticked off the numbers in my Ian Allan book. He was not content with ticking them off but had copied a complete list of every class into a notebook, in which he recorded not merely having seen each loco but when and where.

In retrospect I think I collected numbers only because he did and I now have no interest in it whatsoever. On the other hand I do sometimes take some oppotunities to ride over bits of track that I have no ridden over before. Is that any more or any less rational?

 

One of my earliest railway memories, from about 1959, was when returning from a family outing somewhere my father stopped at a bridge going over a railway. Why have we stopped asked the other three? To watch engines taking water at the troughs here. We had stopped on the GWR line near Aldermaston and Dad and I walked up to the bridge and found a place where I could see the troughs. We waited 5 - 10 minutes and could then see smoke approaching. Watch this I was told. The expected did not happen - the loco on the front was a Bulleid pacific and therefore could not use the troughs. The rest of the family had had enough at this point and off we went, home. However, living on the LSWR main line I fondly remember watching the Bulleids steaming through Farnborough. Still have my combines, earliest 1960

 

I am still remorseful that I wished 60111 scrapped some time in the late 50s after seeing her through Wood Green for what seemed the umpteenth time that week.

 

Happy anniversary!

On the 23rd of December it will be fifty years for me. The location for me was "down the brickyards" by the ECML south of Peterborough, with my cousin Gary.

 

My elder brother's bugbear was 60034 Lord Faringdon. Mine was 55 010 The Kings Own Scottish Borderer.

 

57002 always seems to follow me about, although my last encounter with it was about 5 years ago.

 

I think the first run I logged was whilst I was still at school; I'd been given the task of escorting three of the girls in my music class to London on the train (to see Mike Oldfield) and sorting out tickets and times &c., "because I understood trains". Despite me being surrounded by three attractive fellow students, my locoshed was out and I was timing the Deltic hauling us down to the Cross. It was then I realised that down the bank towards New Southgate, a Deltic was capable of over 110mph.

Before you ask "hang on - where was your teacher?" - he'd taken his favourites down in his car!

Autres temps, autres mœurs, as they say.

 

Reading Station 1980-plonk. Country end of platform 4 (as was), there was a sign directing trainspotters there.
Hoovers, HSTs, 47s, 56s, 59s, loose-coupled engineers trains.
Jumpers for goalposts

Marvellous...