Earliest memories of Railways

[SRman]

I have memories from when I was around four years old, although I would have been watching trains from a still earlier age. How do I know that? Because my grandparents' house in Queensway, Petts Wood backed on to the southern (Orpington) end of Petts Wood station. I would stand on a 3-legged stool in their kitchen to watch the trains pass by, with suburban EMUs interspersed with Hastings DEMUs and Dover-bound trains still steam-hauled for a short time before the electrification produced what are now known as class 71 electric locos. It was always a treat to see the Golden Arrow pass through. In warmer weather, I could go to the end of the garden and watch from there, or even climb a large apple tree and observe from a better height.

 

I remember air-smoothed Bulleid pacifics clanking through. There were a few other steam types as well, but the Bulleids stood out because of their distinctive shape. 

I never actually saw a goods train, but I did hear them clanking and grinding through late at night whenever I spent the night there.

I can't say I ever saw or heard a diesel locomotive through there, although they obviously did travel though - what are now known as classes 24 and 33 were based at Hither Green, not all that far away.

 

[bike2steam]

The earliest railway memory - nice summer walks on pre-school days in the early 1950's, walking up a country lane (Pensons Lane), with my mother, not far from where we lived in Shelley, just outside of Ongar in Essex. Standing on the railway bridge over the Ongar branch line watching the steam trains going under.

[Allegheny1600]

Some pretty vague and mixed up memories for me!

After my Grandad died in 1967 when I was two, my Grandma moved (back) to just outside Little Bytham and lived in a bungalow overlooking the ECML - so I probably saw all the Deltics but I wasn't interested in collecting numbers for a long time.

At this time, my parents were into boating and my dad moored his boat 'Tweed' at Findern, south of Derby, next to the Derby - Birmingham main line and right by the well known junction there. There was a lot of railway activity and I often used to climb onto the roof of the boat to watch the "Deltics" roar past. It was only later that I leant these were actually "Peaks"!

The first clear memory for me was my parents deliberately taking me lineside at Findern to watch "Flying Scotsman" on it's first trip back in the UK after nearly being "lost" in the USA? I believe this was about 1971? I would have been about six.

I have a few distant memories of French trains too as my parents started travelling abroad from the winter of 1970 but FS is the clearest early memory.

[Rugd1022]

My most vivid early memory is still etched into my mind even now - it was Christmas 1970, being lifted up onto the curved brick wall at the bottom of Railway Terrace in Rugby watching AL6s thundering through, at all of 40mph on the Down Fast line on northbound expresses, some still had white cab roofs, plus AM4 and AM10 units trundling in and out of the north end bays under that vast overall roof of the station. Also recall seeing a green liveried 25 pottering about in front of the old GEC Works and a two tone green 47 heading north on a 'liner. It all seems a bit dreamlike now, even though in the grand scheme of things it wasn't that long ago at all.

 

I do remember family trips to London before this though, catching a late night train down to Euston with my parents before my sister was born which means it was before May '69, and recall quite vividly the red LT stock with the curved 'skirts' at the bottom on the District Line on our way to Hammersmith. It must have been around this time that my maternal Grandfather took me onto Barnes Bridge station to watch trains passing through, he lived in Nassau Road just round the corner, I vaguely remember seeing a green diesel loco pass through on a rake of box vans, it was most likely a 33. It was actually more a case of me leading him onto the station as he was almost completely blind by then! My Grandparents split and both remarried with my Nan staying in Hammersmith, her new husband 'Grandpot Leslie' would often take me for a wonder around parts of West London and one freezing cold Sunday morning he took me all the way up to Old Oak, we just wandered in down the long slope and nobody bothered us - the sight, sound and smells of all those Hydraulics scattered round the turntable has stayed with me all these years. I've never quite managed to pin down the date but it was before my second sister was born so very likely sometimes in late '71. I do remember walking along the towpath of the canal behind Old Oak as far as Kensal Rise gasworks, as we approached Mitre Bridge a 33 went over light engine.

[Phil Bullock]

4 hours ago, Chris M said:

I was born in 1955. My first and somewhat vague memories of trains come from Bromsgrove station. My Dad used to take me and my big brother there on the odd Saturday or Sunday. I was very young but I certainly a recall big black engine with lots of wheels which must have been the 9F banker. I remember the signals clanking and the anticipation of another train coming and I remember when I went to bed after spending time at Bromsgrove. I closed my eyes and just saw loads of track and trains.  I know this was early in my life because Dad stopped taking us when the diesels took over. He didn't think it was anywhere near so interesting for us lads by the time it was mostly diesels. I was too young to disagree.

 

A bit of a common theme here location wise Chris!

[peanuts]

my earliest memory of trains would be 1966/7 watching a group of engines pass by the bottom our garden on the Micklehurst loop heading west would of been 1/2 years old sat in my high chair so a very hazy memory 

[SM42]

I blame my brother.

 

He's the one that would take me to the "wooden bridge" (that long grey footbridge just outside the SVR station at Kidderminster)  to watch the trains.

 

The resident 08 would be burbling away under the bridge whilst the crew were in the cabin (it's still there) probably reading the paper and drinking tea.

Sometimes there would be work to do and the 08 would be busy sorting out wagons, loose shunting a plenty.

 

Occasionally the pick up goods with a 25 (normally 25 222) at the helm, would arrive in the yard and all this to the background of DMUs turning to form services back to Birmingham New St using the crossover outside the signalbox, or being stabled in the mileage sidings and the through DMU services to Worcester with the occasional freight thrown in for good measure. The clatter of semaphore signals, the sound of the signal wires, the clash of buffers and the background music of the 08 going about its business.

 

We didn't live too far from the railway and the clash of buffers in the yard was always one of those daily (except Sunday) background noises.

 

The exciting memory from those  times was being evacuated from my pre school (now a scout hut) because a train of vans with a peak at the helm had derailed entering the down good loop. This was on the embankment behind the building.  I can still see that higgly piggly line of 12t vans now

 

Andy

 

[dvdlcs]

Circa 1977 we lived in Pembroke (Wales) and I attended a primary school there.

 

I can remember a footpath around the perimeter of the school yard, and on the far side of the footpath was a railway line. The best I can describe it was that if the school yard was on the left, it dropped away with the school lower than the foot path and the railway line, on the right of the path, higher than the path itself. So essentially an embankment. But then I was 4 or 5 at the time so heights may be relative.

 

My memory is on one occasion seeing a blue DMU (I'll say a 108 although it could have been a 116) go past us when we were on this path, either going to or coming away from school.

 

I don't know the name of the school, or even what part of Pembroke we were living in, so am unable to offer any more than that.

[Bert Cheese]

It would most likely be one of the Eastleigh depot open days for me, late 70's or so but I remember a couple of events quite well...

 

Among the exhibits was an army Warflat or whatever c/w some sort of armoured personel carrier on board...it was somehow full of children of a similar age to me and so I climbed in to live out my Commando Magazine fantasies!

Some "naughty boy" in the front managed to start the engine which obviously caused a bit of a scene...me and my brother leapt out the back and hid/escaped as you do just as several panicked BR staff appeared and gave those left on board a bit of a lecture.

There were also some class 71/74 carcasses still on site but not on display as such near the fuelling sheds, my dad managed to obtain permission for us to have a brief clamber over one as the fitters were stripping the cab out...not a clue which one it was unfortunately and my only memory of them at all.

[D1023]

1975/76. It was either being taken to Worcester Shed to see a bashed up D1055 or being lifted up at Worcester SH so I could see (what I'm told was D1048) in Worcester Yard on the china clay empties.

 

 

[eastwestdivide]

Two family holidays to Hopton-on-Sea in the 1960s, staying at a holiday camp. First one memorable for catching the train into Great Yarmouth sitting with my Dad behind the driver looking out of the front of the DMU. Second one a couple of years later, I distinctly remember feeling very uneasy having my photo taken with my sister, both of us standing on the now-closed track. "Are you sure there won't be a train?"

Remarkably, two photos survive from back then:

 

With my Mum in 1965:

 

 

With my sister in 1968:

Edited December 27, 2019 by eastwestdivide

[brianusa]

Depending on ones vintage there must be many memories, some even from early childhood and before WW2.  Obviously many will be only useful to whatever locality one grew up in and two earliest of mine were waiting in Millbay Station, Plymouth before it was bombed.  The other was waiting for a train at Mutley station before its demolition..  Both train related at an early age!

      Brian.

[Phil Bullock]

5 hours ago, D1023 said:

1975/76. It was either being taken to Worcester Shed to see a bashed up D1055 or being lifted up at Worcester SH so I could see (what I'm told was D1048) in Worcester Yard on the china clay empties.

 

 

 

Have you seen this one Tim?

 

http://www.miac.org.uk/class52.html#brd1048

 

[D1023]

8 hours ago, Phil Bullock said:

 

Have you seen this one Tim?

 

http://www.miac.org.uk/class52.html#brd1048

 

 

Lovely photo! The photos on that page taken from Railway Walk bring back memories too!

[Phil Bullock]

2 hours ago, D1023 said:

 

Lovely photo! The photos on that page taken from Railway Walk bring back memories too!

 

For me too - most of my lunch hours 69 to 74 were spent there, Pie and chips from Laslett or Pinkett Street!

[NorthBrit]

11 hours ago, Phil Bullock said:

 

Have you seen this one Tim?

 

http://www.miac.org.uk/class52.html#brd1048

 

 

Hi Phil.   Lovely photos.  Thanks for posting.    

Many years ago (1963 I think)   a colleague at work let me read his copy of Model Railway News  (or was it Constructor).   Anyway, one of the articles was about the 'Westerns'.     I was 'hooked' on them.  So much so I now have twelve models on my layout.

[Butler Henderson]

From around 4 years old standing on the public footbridge that spanned Nottingham Victoria. Other clear memories are the signals of the GNRs Leen Valley line guarding the approach to Leen Valley Junction and numerous GN and GC bridges/viaducts  that rapidly disappeared, while in my earlier years I would have heard Stanier Black Fives sounding their whistles as they somehow managed to work Marylebone-Nottm Vic trains despite their knackered condition. Also have memories of standing on an overbridge somewhere in the countryside looking at a small steam locomotive - possibly one of the Leicestesrhire Ironstone lines.

[The Stationmaster]

Regrettably I was too young to have any memory at all of my first railway Journey - down to my grandparents in the Vale of The White Horse when I was a few weeks old but it must have been just about 100% GWR as I was born 27 and a half hours after it ceased to exist.  Early things I can remember - Guildford station changing trains on a journey back from Littlehampton when I was about four (we returned by train because I had been sick in the motorcycle sidecar going down); the seemingly black and filthy dirty journey through Nottingham and Sheffield and waiting under the overall roof at Banbury when changing trains so I would have been about 4 or5 when coming back from visiting the other grandparents although oddly seeing an A4 during that visit didn't stick in my mind; walking from Southampton Terminus station to the docks to catch the boat to Jersey and seeing a strange looking engine in the station (which must have been a T9).

 

Those are the really  early memories - much clearer ones come a few years later - seeing a brand new D601 passing St Budeaux on the Up Penzance Postal just a few weeks before seeing an almost equally new EE Type 4 at Liverpool St.  Seeing the 'Castle' that completed them in my ABC on the Down Main just east of Ealing Broadway from the front passenger windows (behind the cab) in a DMU. Cabbing 60700 at Kings Cross after we'd travelled behind it up from, I think, Grantham.   Being shunted by a J72 from the Scarborough bays at York onto the back of a London.   A ride behind a Darnall EE Type 3 up the GC from Sheffield to Banbury.  Travelling on the WR's 'End of Steam' tour from Paddington to Bristol, Cheltenham and Swindon and then behind a pair of EE Type 3s back to Paddington.  First ever meal on train - Afternoon Tea, in a Gresley triplet, coming up the ECML back in the '50s.

 

[Bon Accord]

My most prominent childhood railway memory would be an occasion with my Grandfather where we watched 60009 rolling into Stirling railway station (platform 2) on a train from Glasgow. I was suitably impressed with the beast, we had recently visited the (now long gone) Model Engineer shop up the hill and had then enjoyed tea inside Stirling Middle (signalbox) courtesy of the old fellas still working cronies; the sound of near continuous block bells coupled with the ever present aroma of coal/sulphur, furniture polish, brasso and pipe tobacco. Sheer delight to a 7 year old and I can still imagine it!

 

[Colin_McLeod]

9 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Regrettably I was too young to have any memory at all of my first railway Journey - down to my grandparents in the Vale of The White Horse when I was a few weeks old but it must have been just about 100% GWR as I was born 27 and a half hours after it ceased to exist.  
 

 

Happy birthday for tomorrow.

[Brit70053]

Approximately 1955-6, being under primary school age and living in a farm estate cottage which had no Electricity or hot running water, but was close to the East Coast Main Line about 3 miles south of Durham City.

Saturday morning, entrusted with the half crown which paid the weekly rent and milk bill and accompanied by the year older little girl from next door, I'd set off across the bridge over the main line to the big white Farm House and dutifully hand over the 2/6d to Mrs Tait, the farmer's wife.

Returning, we would regularly stand on the bridge over the railway and watch entranced as a northbound express train, hauled by what I now know to have been an A4, swept toward us and engulfed the bridge and ourselves in billowing white smoke as it passed beneath us.

Returning home, my parents would ask "Did you see Silver Link ?" (It was always Silver Link, I think the only A4 name they knew of).

A year or two later the family had moved to a newly built council house which was nearer to the local Railway station on the Durham to Bishop Auckland line. The primary school I attended was directly adjacent to the station . Bad planning for my education as the railway in its cutting was a constant distraction, being plainly visible from the playground. Freight trains predominated during the school day and Loco crew and guards were always, it seemed happy to wave to children lined up along the school perimeter fence

On a Saturday my maternal grandmother would often lead a family outing on the train to either Bishop Auckland or Sunderland, combining shopping with visits to relatives.

Sundays however were a favoured day for observing  trains through this 'Secondary Route' as regular Engineering work on the ECML meant that many main line services would be diverted and almost any top link motive power could turn up.

If only I'd been old and knowledgeable  enough to know what I'd seen pass through!

 

Happy New Year All,

 

                                        John

 

 

 

[Rugd1022]

11 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Regrettably I was too young to have any memory at all of my first railway Journey - down to my grandparents in the Vale of The White Horse when I was a few weeks old but it must have been just about 100% GWR as I was born 27 and a half hours after it ceased to exist.  Early things I can remember - Guildford station changing trains on a journey back from Littlehampton when I was about four (we returned by train because I had been sick in the motorcycle sidecar going down); the seemingly black and filthy dirty journey through Nottingham and Sheffield and waiting under the overall roof at Banbury when changing trains so I would have been about 4 or5 when coming back from visiting the other grandparents although oddly seeing an A4 during that visit didn't stick in my mind; walking from Southampton Terminus station to the docks to catch the boat to Jersey and seeing a strange looking engine in the station (which must have been a T9).

 

Those are the really  early memories - much clearer ones come a few years later - seeing a brand new D601 passing St Budeaux on the Up Penzance Postal just a few weeks before seeing an almost equally new EE Type 4 at Liverpool St.  Seeing the 'Castle' that completed them in my ABC on the Down Main just east of Ealing Broadway from the front passenger windows (behind the cab) in a DMU. Cabbing 60700 at Kings Cross after we'd travelled behind it up from, I think, Grantham.   Being shunted by a J72 from the Scarborough bays at York onto the back of a London.   A ride behind a Darnall EE Type 3 up the GC from Sheffield to Banbury.  Travelling on the WR's 'End of Steam' tour from Paddington to Bristol, Cheltenham and Swindon and then behind a pair of EE Type 3s back to Paddington.  First ever meal on train - Afternoon Tea, in a Gresley triplet, coming up the ECML back in the '50s.

 

 

Enjoyed reading that Mike, many thanks for sharing it all. Before my time (shame!) but it conjures up chats with my maternal grandparents telling me what it was like living and working in London in the '30, '40s and '50s and travelling on Western and Southern metals almost every week. When I joined the footplate in '83 and went to Old Oak the first thing my Grandad said to me was ''how's my old Great Western looking these days...?" which was nice. Nan travelled on the SR a lot with her various cleaning jobs and often told me how busy and noisy it was south of the river, something I always think about when working our Battersea job down past Latchmere, under the LSWR mainline and on through Longhedge Junction etc, it must have been fascinating in her day with Maunsells, Uries and Bullieds everywhere, plus of course all of the green liveried EMUs endlessly flying about. For a brief period in the '50s she had a cleaning job at Lilley Bridge depot on the LU, which I now go past on that same Battersea job.

[Nearholmer]

The LSWR main line was a very good show in the early 1960s.

 

A little bit after the previous memory that I recounted, I have a clear film in my head of the view from my Uncle’s then girlfriend’s flat. Her kitchen was on the second floor overlooking the down-side yard country-side of Woking station - the goods yard nearest, then the main lines, then the PAD. She and my mother would sit down for a coffee and a long gossip, while my brother and I got given a glass of squash and the best seat in the house.

 

Not only were there steam expresses, but goods trains with either ‘elephant’s ears’ engines (N class) or Q1, but Electrics (BILs on the locals, CORs to Portsmouth), and the steam cranes in the PAD.

 

Curiously, I can remember details like the glass that the squash came in, the yellow melamine kitchen tabletop, and what was playing on the radio (“From me to you” by the Beatles, which dates it neatly to early summer 1963).

 

I must still have been under 5yo (because my second brother was a baby on my mother’s lap. (Based on the song, I would be just short of 4yo, my next bro just 2yo, and my youngest bro only a few months, probably being ‘shown off’).

 

 

Edited January 1, 2020 by Nearholmer

[The Lurker]

My memory is an amalgamation of repeated trips to watch the trains at Paddock Wood - I was train mad from an early age and have a treasured Southern Railway Album inscribed as a present from 1970. My mum’s mum lived backing on to the Bromley North branch and I remember seeing the train at the end of the garden there. Other relations lived in Sittingbourne and we used to visit the Kemsley Light railway there too. When we visited the seaside we went down towards Romney Marsh and I can still remember the smell of smoke as we went past Rolvenden; it felt like the sea was near then although in reality St Mary’s Bay was some way off!

[TheSignalEngineer]

14 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

seeing a brand new D601 passing St Budeaux on the Up Penzance Postal

My Dad's job in the Fire Brigade meant that holidays were on a roster, 12 men on the watch, two weeks each in summer meant that holidays started around Easter and finished in September. Occasionally it was possible to swap with people who hadn't got children and didn't wanr to go in the main six weeks but in 1958 we were stuck with the first two weeks in May. Waiting at St Austell for the Wolverhampton train an Up Paddington (The Riviera?) came through at speed with D600 up front. It was my first main line diesel other than the LMS and SR prototypes.

 

Other 1950s trips included round trips over the S&D in 1953 and 1955 complete with trip to Swanage in Malachite Green stock. In the 1956 I was probably one of the few left who managed to do all three Barnstaple stations on one train, Ilfracombe to Birmingham calling at Town, Junction and the reversal at Victoria Road.

 

Another visit I remember was in 1954 being taken to the Birmingham New Street Centenary, with 46235, LNWR 'Hardwicke', a Kirtley 2-4-0, two Royal Saloons and Edwardian LNWR and Midland coaches.