Your earliest loco memory

Whilst we're all stuck indoors I thought it would be nice to see what was everyone's earliest steam loco encounter they can remember.

My earliest that I can just about remember was in the early 2000s when I was a young'un at Colchester station seeing 45407 (when she ran as 45157), take on water and depart north, even have video footage taken by my grandad.

 

Standing on the footplates of a pair of tenderless LSWR A12 0-4-2 engines, cab to cab on the scrap road alongside Eastleigh Airport while my Grandfather dug his allotment. Late 1940s.

 

on a company kids trip to southport by rail around 1950 at Wigan 40001 and 45519 Lady Godiva

 

Something big and black at Arley when I was about 3 on a late Autumn night in 1987, its one of 4 (5000, 8233, 43106 or 46443) but possibly explains my bias towards the LMS and my love for lined black!

 

Inside Stewarts lane engine one Sunday morning walking around 20+ withdrawn K class locomotives, I was about 11 or 12 at the time, I have always wondered why the withdrawn locos were kept inside the shed and not outside as was the case at Nine Elms and Old Oak common. I was with my cousin who was a railway Policeman (not called British transport police then) and had access to all sheds, on Sundays he would take me around various London MPD.

 

I remember kilmersdon and it could have been at radstock

 

Haydock foundry bellerophon built in 1874 wells tank engine is probably the oldest preservation cop ive rode behind at the 2016 Middleton victorian w,end gala in Leeds, if it counts for this thread in the preservation scene.
Davo 56F.

 

Lancaster Castle station, aged 3 or 4. A big (it seemed) engine ran in with it's train and my Dad told me it was called 'Blackpool.'

 

I was brought up in North London, not far from the ex GNR mainline, and my earliest railway memories are from the late 1950s/early 60's. I have little specific recollection of individual locos,but remember the distinctive types - A4s, Deltics, and one occasion when a Coronation came through on a special - it was red!

Our local Station was Oakleigh Park, and we often travelled up to King's Cross, Moorgate (Widened lines), or Broad Street in the school holidays, although I don't remember steam on the local services - class 31s, Baby Deltics, some variety of what we called "Sulzers" and Class 105 DMUs. The abiding memory is of dirt, diesel fumes and left over dereliction from wartime damage. Oakleigh Park (and other stations) were still gas lit, and the old wooden buildings were equipped with long leather benches in the waiting rooms, with wonderful coal fires in winter. Most of this didn't go until electrification in the 1980s when bus shelter technology took over.

But what made the biggest impact on me railway-wise were, firstly, a number of summer holidays at Blue Anchor where our from our chalet we could watch Prairie tanks going to and from Minehead. These were replaced in the 2nd and 3rd years by DMUs, from which I watched and learned about single track lines with tokens. Then secondly a visit to the Bluebell Railway in 1965 sparked an interest in steam, preferably colourful, clean and victoran or edwardian in origin, that has never left me. The loco on that day was the Adams tank, 488, with a couple of wooden compartment carriages, the observation car, and on one train the Brighton Directors saloon. A glorious day! That was what gave me an interest that has lasted over 50 years. I've since discovered light railways and narrow gauge, but that's another story!

Steve B

 

It must have been late 1954 when the family visited Granny in Cheshire. Glasgow train from Euston, change at Crewe. I remember the shape of the loco on our train to Cheadle Hulme, and could only identify it when I became a spotter sometime later. It was a Fowler 2-6-4T.
My next trip to Granny's, in late 1956 found me and my Dad on a Sunday evening train from Stockport to St Pancras. Fixed in my memory is the screaming whistle and the firebox glow from our loco as our train flew through stations in Hertfordshire. At the bufferstops in London, the name Lady Godiva stuck with me. Did I imagine it? The allocation history suggests it was a Longsight loco at the time, so it probably was. That Patriot is what started me as a trainspotter!

 

I suspect that my earliest steam memory was of my Dad picking me up to watch over the bridge parapet, a train arriving at Loughborough Central, probably in about 1976 or so, but I am only guessing on the year. I have a very clear memory of riding behind 4472 on the Steamtown demonstration line in about 1977; I was 3, and I couldn’t understand why we were getting off “to look at the engine” when it seemed we had only just got on and gone a few hundred yards. I thought it had broken down!
Probably from around the same time I can remember seeing a train of wagons going through the former East Leake station, as we walked to or from the shops (I say walked, I may have been in a pushchair).


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Probably in the mid-1950s and before I started school. It was at Lime Street station with an engine at the stops, and the driver let this little lad on to the footplate. Memory is vague, but I do recall the wide firebox, so probably a Lizzie. He let me move the regulator, and with the taps open, and I well remember the roar of steam and the huge cloud ahead of the engine. Wonderful!

 

The Guards Van of what I assume to be 307. My sister in the pram.

Things I can clearly identify. Earl of Merioneth on the Ffestiniog, seeing Prince at Dduallt (and then changing at TyB to get it on the way back down) and the same with Linda. Bodmin on the MHR, Hinton Manor on the SVR. A ride in the pouring rain from Exeter to Teignmouth behind a 45.

At the risk of turning into Proust. Smells, tastes and sounds also trigger memories. The slightly metallic damp/mouldy smell of a MK1. The much nicer smell of the dining car on VIA's Canadian. (My sister and I travelled on it some 15 years after we had first travelled on it and we both instantly recognised the smell). Oddly enough, Ready Salted crisps with tea always reminds me of Ffestiniog Buffet cars. I guess it must have been all they had. The sound of the compressor on a CIG/VEP.

 

Late 1940's early 50's, footplate rides on a small LMS tank engine (don't ask, I can't remember) from Heckmondwike Central to Northorpe (just a couple of miles). My mates dad was a driver and Sunday evenings we'd wait for him arriving driving the local stopping train, we'd jump up on the footplate and ride 1 stop to Northorpe. Then we'd wait while he came back from Huddersfield and ride the one stop back to Heckmondwike.
Happy days.

 

I was keen on steam trains from an early age because my auntie lived in a house which looked out on the Victoria to Dover line at Dulwich with big locos working hard up the 1 in 100, where it was crossed by the viaduct between North Dulwich and Tulse Hill, on which C2Xs could occasionally be seen high above.

But the first specific loco I can really remember was from visiting my other auntie at Poole around 1954, when I was seven. We travelled on the 0848 from Surbiton (0830 from Waterloo), always a Nelson turn to Bournemouth in those days. When we got to Poole, while my mum and dad unloaded the luggage and my sister, I made a break for freedom up the platform to look at the engine. Some of the Arthurs had difficult names for little ones, but this one did not--- 30782, Sir Brian. I've sometimes wondered whether Michael Palin had stored that name up in his memory for later use. It was my dad's name (not the Sir bit!)

PS I think I've read that one of the Arthurs names is actually a spelling mistake!

 

I watched trains on Saltaire station from an early age, but I couldn't tell you what they were. Black engines, green engines and namers. And some very early DMUs.

The earliest I could identify, just after I had learned to read, was Golden Fleece, at Kings Cross.

I bought my first combine in 1964, and my first cop was 45675 Hardy, at Apperley Bridge.

 

I was taken one evening to Hitchin station in 1967 or 1968 when Flying Scotsman came through (after-dark?) returning on one of it's rail tours to or from KX - the noise frightened the life out of me and sent me scurrying, something that has remained as a memory with me to this day!