My first (loco) love

[Gavvy2]

My first loco love was rather mundane but it was nearly 60 years ago.She was Stanier 2-6-2T 40077 and she was one of the regular engines on the Styal line local services between Wilmslow and Manchester. If I remember correctly I saw her nearly every day past my parent's house but two occasions stick in my mind when something else appeared. The first was during a coal shortage in the early 50's when Ivatt 2-6-0s took over. The second was circa 1956 or 7 when suddenly steam disappeared and was replaced by new Derby Lightweights,seemingly never to return.

 

I have vivid memories of the running round procedure at Wilmslow but I expect I am looking through rose tinted glasses. Things rapidly changed from then on with the WCML electification pilot scheme but that's another story!

 

Funnily enough Britannias took over as my favourite and have remained so until this day.

 

Gavin

[PhilH]

SR class 700 30306 - it always seemed to be the shed pilot on the occasions of my first footplate trips (aged 5 and a bit!) at Eastleigh (71A) shed. My dad worked there, my gran lived in the road next door so after the foreman had gone home some fun was had....

[Brinkly]

For me it has to be my first footplate ride on 14xx class, 1420 back when I was 12. Best birthday present ever. For me the 14xx class is number one.

 

Regards,

 

Nick

[Burkitt]

A stuffed and mounted one for me, as we didn't get many (any) locos on my bit of Network Southeast. The prototype Deltic was the highlight of trips to the Science Museum with my dad, and after it moved to York played the same role for visits to the NRM when up there to see my gran.

 

Paul

[S.A.C Martin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwApYDcoo1Y

Flying Scotsman, in this livery, at that time. Happy days, and in the dark green livery, she was the subject of my first Hornby model too.

 

Still remains one of my favourite locomotives, though I suspect I'll be torn between 60103 and 60163 when they are both in steam together...

[LH&JC]

LH&JC No.5 I passed my A level English thanks to a coursework based on her!

[coachmann]

Flying Scotsman looked just right to me right down to the German Smoke Deflectors. Interesting to see the two greens together. Scotsman was right, the other carried a green that the toy paint manufacturers would have us believe was used on steam locos. And when I saw that little boy, I thought I've seen him too! I did a lot of filming on the LR between 1990-97.

[Mallard60022]

Steam (small), 30183 Class O2 Station Pilot at Devonport King's Road in 1958. There every school day until 1962 and then she was gone!

Steam (big), any ex works rebuilt Bulleid Pacific but probably Elders Fyffes (Old Bananas to us west country boys).

Diesel, Prototype Deltic.

Electric, got to be the first 76 I saw.

Bog Cart, Trans Pennine Units with those rounded cab windows!

Foreign thingy - see my Avatar!

36E (ex 72A)

[Mucky Duck]

Well there are bound to be inumerable groans but all I saw as a kid were scruffy black – make that grey and rust – engines,

so when I first clapped eyes on 4472 as Alan Pegler first ran her I nearly wet myself.

 

I still think that Gresley's A1s and A3s are the most elegantly proportioned locomotives ever built but I don't care what colour the

Flying Scotsman was/is supposed to be (although I do prefer Apple Green) or how much money has been supposedly 'wasted' on it.

I did care when it wore those abominable smoke deflectors and I guess that it's possibly in which guise you first saw it that makes

it your preferred version.

[coachmann]

I did care when it wore those abominable smoke deflectors and I guess that it's possibly in which guise you first saw it that makes it your preferred version.

I saw the A3's long before German type deflectors were fitted. They just looked good to me as without them the smokebox on an A3 always looks too far back. Must be an artistic thing.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

LH&JC No.5 I passed my A level English thanks to a coursework based on her!

 

That reminds me. When I was doing my English Language GCE O level, I wrote about Birmingham Snow Hill station.

[38c]

Like yesterday B1 61111 fithy must have had 10 or more on against the grade[leaving Leic GC past Abbey Lane sidings}. It left an impression even though it was 55 yars ago fair dropped my Jubby !

 

regards

 

Dave

[Guest stuartp]

Nellie.

 

Hudswell Clarke 1435 of 1922. When my mum was a student teacher she took a load of kids to Bradford Industrial Museum and brought me back a huge poster of this. Later I went to see her myself and later still I did my work experience at Esholt Sewage Works, her former stamping ground. I got halfway through scratchbuilding her in styrene, it didn't look half bad but a rather more accurate 4mm kit currently sits in the stash patiently waiting its turn. It's got no business being in southwest Scotland of course but there's a backstory all prepared for when it eventually turns up on Portwilliam.

[great central]

Has to be a 9F for me, 92091 to be precise.

I think I remember being taken in my pushchair to Nottingham Victoria by my father, I could hace been walking,it's a loooong time ago, around 1957, I was about 4.

Sitting/standing towards the north end of platform 7, the main up platform, trains came out of Mansfield Road tunnel, seemed to head straight for you before swinging alongside the platform. To have something as massive as a 9F passing within a few feet of you leaves one heck of an impression! I think I had that number plate pressed into my forehead! I would pester my parents to take me to see the trains at almost every opportunity.

Another abiding memory of a 9F was when I was with my mother going to visit my aunt who lived in Loughborough, always went by the GC route, we had stopped at a station, possibly Ruddington and a 9F hauled Windcutter came roaring through the other way. I had seen them regularly, but at my local station (New Basford) they were either coasting downhill towards Victoria or slogging uphill on the last leg to Annesley. To see one running hard, and fast, according to Colin walker in one of his books, speeds towards 60mph were commonplace, left another abiding memory.

When I was a bit older and able to go about with a few friends, I was probably about 8, the oldest would have been about 10, we would spend many hours at New Basford or get a ticket to travel into Victoria, or further afield, such as Grantham with it's Pacifics and Pullmans, it was another world. The 9F was still my favourite though, followed closely by B1's.

There is a twinge of sadness though, the last time I went on holiday with my parents (I think) was 1968, when i was 15. We called in at Carnforth depot, which was by then almost finished with steam, and found on the scrap line a sorry looking 92091

[bike2steam]

7032 - Denbigh Castle, I had the Hornby-Dublo model as part of the 'Red Dragon' set when it came out. Saw the full-size version many, many, times at Old Oak, one Saturday afternoon the crew must have got so bored they were giving 'spotters footplate rides (me included) up, and down the loco yard from the start of the coaling plant incline, along the tank loco side (south) up to the entrance of the locoshed ( southeast turntable).

[trisonic]

70000 Britannia for me.

Use to run past my house when I was a kid (the old GER mainline) all the time - looked magnificant on the embankment outside Shenfield. Plus it is only ten months older than me (I need some preservation).

 

Best, Pete.

[S.A.C Martin]

Flying Scotsman looked just right to me right down to the German Smoke Deflectors. Interesting to see the two greens together. Scotsman was right, the other carried a green that the toy paint manufacturers would have us believe was used on steam locos. And when I saw that little boy, I thought I've seen him too! I did a lot of filming on the LR between 1990-97.

 

Happy days...my aunt lived not too far from Llangollen, and whenever we would visit her, a trip to the Llangollen inevitably ensued. It was quite by accident that time that we discovered Flying Scotsman was visiting, my dad tells me - I was more interested in 60103 than a certain blue tank engine parked up in the sidings, by some way.

 

I do think your first impressions of a steam locomotive in a particular guise have some affect on your tastes - for me, Flying Scotsman is 60103 - it's all I knew her as, as a child. That my dad also bought the Brunswick green model, and not the apple green one, may have also influenced me. To this day, I know the best brand for her is apple green, for the general public - but I always think back wistfully to that afternoon at Llangollen, and that wonderful double header with Taw Valley (I think it was Taw Valley!).

 

Will she ever appear in brunswick green again? Up to Steam Railway magazine to hound the NRM a tad more I guess. I'd certainly stump up a little more cash to see her in the green one more time.

 

And yet - I've forgotten another early love. Sir Nigel Gresley in BR Blue, thundering along the Mid Hants railway - and I saw her for the first time from the passenger window of my grandfather's granada, I think around the same time as the Scotsman visit (though it could have easily been later). Wonderful, wonderful memories.

[coachmann]

I must admit 'my first (loco) love is a difficult one. Because of my Uncle's interest I saw plenty of steam trains (there was now't else) but no way could I identify what I was seeing other than that some were tank locos. They would have been LNER engines at that date.

 

Therefore I suspect my first love must have been the LMS Compound that I could differentiate from other locos and which I only saw while at the family caravan in North Wales. I am however pretty sure the look and smokebox 'face' led me to recognise similar family traits in the 7F 0-8-0 and 3MT 2-6-2T, locomotives that were regularly seen in the town where I lived.

[jamie92208]

Has to be 9F 92208 for me, a kindly driver gave me and my mate a cab ride from Blea Moor to Settle in 1967. As our freight poulled up in the station and we climbed donw the porter was somewhat started when we handed in the retunr halves of our day returns to Ribblehead.

 

I always loved watching the 9F's on ther long drag from our house as I grew up. All I want to do now is find out how to get a recording of one as the ring tone on my phone.

 

Jamie

[Jenny Emily]

There's only one specific loco that had any kind of significance for me; I was never really what you might call a trainspotter. It was the Hunslett Austerity that was sat in the carpark at Cefn Coed colliery in South Wales. Whilst my parents' house was being built in the mid 1980s, I was living with my grandparents in Ystradgynlais in the next valley. I used to pester my grandfather most evenings to drive me over there so I could play on it. I remember that whilst the paint was clean and fairly new, the loco itself was fairly heavily stripped - there weren't even any connecting rods and the brake assembly on the side facing away from the carpark was all missing too. Under the paintwork the locomotive was in a terrible state. In the cab the only thing of significance left was the handbrake handle. I haven't been back in 25 years, so have no idea if it is still there.

[signalmaintainer]

The Black 5, followed by the Class 37.

[Pannier Tank]

ex LMS Jinty 47500 and 47521 and Driver George ?? for allowing me to ride in the cab on numerous occassions.

 

 

[Peter Bedding]

Without a shadow of doubt, "Number One Green Goddess".

 

As a nipper, I had been taken to stay with relatives at Greatstone-on-Sea the year that the RHDR re-opened. (Does anyone have the date?). Up to then, locos (and railways even), had been massive things, almost too large to comprehend.

 

Then for me the RHDR had a magical quality. It was small; I could grasp what was happening. The track plan and centre release road at Hythe took on purpose, and the journey past New Romney Loco Shed took loco spotting to an intensity never equalled since.

 

The smell of steam oil!!!

 

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.....

 

PB

[Colin]

The BR Standard 2-6-4T by a long way. The LTSR was my "local line" in the late 50s and I can remember them fairly well - seeing others of the class on the Southern a few years later just reinforced my love of the class.

Second would have to be Battle of Britain 4-6-2 34086 "219 Squadron" - the first Bulleid pacific I ever saw (at Clapham Junction on a Sunday in summer '65) and quite probably the loco that started me off as a Southern Region modeller.

[Jenny Emily]

...It was the Hunslett Austerity that was sat in the carpark at Cefn Coed colliery in South Wales. ...

 

I haven't been back in 25 years, so have no idea if it is still there.

 

Thanks to the power of Google Earth, I have found that my childhood climbing frame does still exist. It hasn't moved an inch either.