And suddenly the trains were blue, this was getting very confusing. Not as you might imagine because of the transition to Rail Blue, which wasn’t so sudden and had barely kicked off, but because a small boy had moved to Glasgow.

It wasn’t long after disembarking from the Cambrian Airways DC-3 at Glasgow Airport (my first ever flight, so exciting that my baby brother threw up over my lunch), that it became apparent this was not Bath. It wasn’t the accent, 7 year olds pick that up in a matter of hours, it wasn’t the architecture, 7 year olds don’t notice that sort of thing, but two things stood out in particular.

The first was football, which every boy played all day. And the other was the trains. They were a different colour.

At least the Blue Trains were, blue as you might have guessed. Now the Blue Pullman was blue, but it was special. Here every train was blue, at least on the Milngavie line.
The Blue Trains of Glasgow had some small fame at the time, and rightly so. They were among the best looking electric multiple units on the rails, particularly in their original blue livery, with no yellow ends, black or sometimes white roofs and wrap-around front windows. These were the essence of modernity for a boy from the Western Region. And the station signs were blue too!

My first journey left a lasting impression. Electric sliding doors, quietness, acceleration, comfort and a fabulous view through the cab at either end (in original configuration), this felt like a modern railway. We were whisked into Glasgow on Headcode 65 (if I’m not mistaken) affording a view over the docks on the way, arriving in Queen Street Low Level.

Queen Street Upper Level was even more interesting for a small boy in a big city. The locomotives were mostly green, though by now the odd very exotic Rail Blue was creeping in. They were, in the main, later known as Classes 21/29 and were flat-nosed, sad-eyed beasts. Their cousins (Class 22) on the WR hadn’t really registered with me for some reason, but here they were ticking over in the terminus.

Additionally there were a few DMU’s, by now at the bottom of the railway enthusiasm food chain for being far too commonplace. And those Swindon Glasgow-Edinburgh (Class 126) units were certainly not ‘lookers’ no matter what Swindon might have thought, unlike the Trans-Pennine units.

All very exotic but we couldn’t hang around, Dad had to claim the keys to the house. And I had to unpack my motley train set and run a few expresses. Oh for a Blue Train...