Watching trains go by when you were young

[LMS2968]

1 hour ago, adb968008 said:

A very low wall, easy to look over…

And it's still there!

 

 

[SM42]

Mid 70s with older brother and somtimes a cousin too on the "wooden bridge "

 

It was called wooden as that's what the steps and deck were made of. Lots of gaps to look though and some loose boards too to add to the excitement.  The sides were steel. The deck was replaced with concrete in the early 80s

 

The view? 

An 08 shunting the yard, or burbling away under the bridge by the shunter's cabin 

Class 25s were regulars on  pick up goods mid afternoon with peaks, 47s, 31s and 20s making appearances between the regular diet of DMUs

 

The bridge still exists and many a photograph has been taken from it and can be found just off the end of the SVR"s Kidderminster terminus. 

 

It was my regular haunt until I went to university and was on my walk to high school. 6M72 ( St Blazey - Cliffe Vale) was  a regular sight on the way to school . The return   6V70  appeared around 6.30 pm

 

Where I lived I could see the trains if I leaned out of my bedroom  window.

 

If  out in the garden  you could sometimes hear freights coming through the station  and I was able to run down the road, check for traffic, on the main road  cross the road, vault over the 5 bar gate (if it was the weekend or evening) to the college car park, cross the car park and be able to get the loco number as it passed on the far side of the yard. 

 

I couldn't do it now as I am less fit and there is a housing estate and a carriage shed in the way. 

 

Happy days. 

 

Andy

[Crisis Rail]

Good interesting stories. 
 

1973 North of Preston on a pre electrified WCML as 10 year olds. Making dens on the embankment feet away from D400’s in doublehead opening up on the way to Shap. 

 

Hooked. 

 

 

 

[doilum]

Primary school playground was only 150 metres from the Manchester York line. Cross country freight and passenger plus all the local coal traffic made for constant entertainment.

[KingEdwardII]

My first bedroom looked out over the ex-TVR line from Aberdare south to Cardiff, pre-1964. Lots of steam hauled coal trains, interspersed with green DMUs. We could also see out over the valley and pick out trains running on the ex-GWR lines from Neath to Pontypool and the branch from that line to Merthyr Tydfil. The latter was exciting since I could see the trains climbing across the hillside and then disappearing into the tunnel under the mountain that separates Aberdare from Merthyr.

 

In 1964 we moved to Aberystwyth - a very different place, but my school was right next to the station in the centre of town. I used to get my fix of watching trains on the way home from school by wandering down the platforms and checking out the activity in the quite large goods yard.

 

Yours,  Mike.

[brushman47544]

On 26/01/2022 at 13:22, Oldddudders said:

Born in Surrey in Nationalisation year, our rented cottage was only a field away from the Redhill-Guildford- Reading line of the former SER, so trains were always on my horizon. They were steam, too, until shortly before we moved in 1965. On the south side of the house, from my parents' bedroom, a couple of miles away I could see the ex-LBSCR route to Horsham and thence the Mid-Sussex, with 12-car 1930s electrics heading for Bognor and Portsmouth.

 

Our second house was even closer to both routes, being in a Dorking cul-de-sac only 100 yards from the bridge where the former crossed the latter. Is it any wonder that at 17, with a couple of A Levels, I joined BR and stayed in the industry for 38 years?

 

Like Oldddudders, as a child I could see the Redhill-Guildford line from my bedroom window and am just old enough to remember seeing steam trains, though too far away to actually identify numbers. I never really got into spotting Units, so as soon as I was considered old enough to travel on my own I moved on to travelling by train and "bashing". Looking back now I just wish I had taken numbers (or my had parents taken them for me) when younger - Bournemouth by steam, Hornbys on the Newhaven boat train... 

[younGGuns7]

My early days were at Clay X junction a great place as you never quite knew what to expect. Always loved the Thames Clyde/Harwich-Manchester and the 1V 98 these could throw up all manner of locos. I was lucky that my Grand Parents lived in South Wales close to Newport so most holidays were taken down there with a Rail Rover for a week, this is where my love of WR Hydraulics comes from. In the early 80s I moved to a small village south of Chesterfield where I could see the main line again which then rekindled my love of all things railways, I loved large logo as I could spot from my lounge  

[Crisis Rail]

Also recall and never forget my Sister (God rest her) taking me to Preston Station as she had to sketch Architecture probably the cast column supports for her High School exams - must've been about '68 '69 I was Six -  as we were still living in a delapitated Terrace house.

 

Stood on the Footbridge  - eyes full of itchy Soot - never forget

 

The footbridge is still there.

 

[pH]

3 hours ago, brushman47544 said:

 

Like Oldddudders, as a child I could see the Redhill-Guildford line from my bedroom window and am just old enough to remember seeing steam trains, though too far away to actually identify numbers. 

That’s what binoculars are for! From my bedroom window (after we moved from Glasgow), I could look down to the line into Gourock station, though I could only see the tracks in a small gap between two buildings on the main road. Down trains could be seen at Fort Matilda station, and the binoculars trained on the gap in anticipation. Up trains leaving Gourock announced themselves with lots of smoke and steam (this was the early 1960s). It would have been more difficult once steam had gone, but I wasn’t interested in DMUs or EMUs, so it didn’t matter.

[unravelled]

My local train watching , later spotting, then photographing spot, was next to Walton Well Road bridge, Oxford North Junction, (before that got moved to Aristotle lane).

 

 

That's me  on the right. The structure is a bicycle sized kissing gate which was a good legal observation point, before we started trespassing closer to the lines.

Occasionally we went along the allotment path, alongside the shed, and up to the coaling stage and turntable.

 

 

Photos 1954 or '55.

 

I continued to take  photographs there past the end of Oxford steam, through the disposal of the locos there, and the last steam on the York Bournemouth and Bournemoth York services. Up until recently I visited the bridge to see the changes, especially while the Aristotle Lane works were under way.

 

Dave

[31A]

Earliest memories are of being taken by my Mother to a path that sloped down towards the lineside at the north end of Wellingborough station, and vague memories of big black engines with big black smoke!  Later, having moved to Cambridgeshire being taken to the ECML (usually to Everton level crossing between Sandy and St. Neots) for the last days of steam on the GN; remember Father pointing out the silver fox on the side of Silver Fox.  Around that time, visiting Grandmother who lived in a railway house near East Finchley station and occasionally seeing the goods shunting the yard - sometimes N2s but more often Type 1s.  At the same time, went to meet Uncle when he finished his shift as a fitter and him showing us round Top Shed.  I wish I could remember all those things more clearly!

 

[Pacific231G]

Not far from Unravelled, our second favourite spot was the old Wolvercote Level Crossing north of Oxford. It became less level crossingish as the years progressed but I think the crossing box was still in place  when we first went there. My favourite spot though was the north end of the down platform at Oxford station. Not so much watching trains go by as their arriving and departing - though goods trains went by on the middle roads. You could quite legally get a lot closer to the Halls and Castles than you ever could from the lineside as they set off for Banbury or Worcester and even walk alongside them for the first few yards. Added entertainment came from  watching the Bulleid Pacifics slipping furiously on the other side andguessing how late the Pines Express would be "The Pines Express is ninety, nine oh, minutes late" was a not uncommon Oxford station  announcement.  A good afternoon's entertanment for the price (2d?) of a platform ticket though more pennies were wasted with the metal sign making machine.

With the station master's permission I even made my very first film at Oxford station (a very short black and white silent comedy)  but by then the hated Hymeks had come.   

[47449xeCD]

I grew up 5 minutes walk from the viaduct in Old Colwyn. On warm summer nights with the bedroom window open I could hear Class 40’s as they climbed the gradient towards Penmaenrhos tunnel. After school I’d hang out with friends on benches near the viaduct to look out for the evening “Bangor” in case it was a 40. Of course summer Saturdays produced a whole procession of them, along with a few 25’s as well. 
 

On days when feeling flush, a 15 minute bike ride to Colwyn Bay station and 37p forked over for a child day return to Llandudno Junction, we’d wait patiently for the next 40-hauled passenger service to take us for the short ride there. The day would be spent eating chips and watching 25’s and 40’s shunt the yard, and sometimes an attempt to bunk round the shed if feeling brave. Of course there were 47’s too (in increasing numbers), and an occasional Peak even as early as 1982 (a year before the trans-Pennine services began). Fly ash trains in connection with the building of the new A55 brought the excitement of 56’s as well. 

Edited February 4, 2022 by 47449xeCD

[Davexoc]

Having moved house several times, early days were spent waving to trains passing by our house in Eaglescliffe, with one occasion actually falling over the three bar fence into the brambles on the railway side!

A move to Daventry meant watching was limited to WCML electrics running parallel to The Grand Union on a day out walking, but we did have a 0-6-0ST climbing frame in the local Rec in those days.

Another move to Chinnor, and it was a dash to see what the 33 on the Thame tanks was before school started, and going down to Wainhill crossing to open the gates for the Chinnor cement works coal train in the holidays.

Visits to my relations in Portsmouth usually meant a trip to The Fratton Bargain Shop, and a while at either Fratton, or Portsmouth & Southsea watching a procession of units with the odd Bristol loco hauled coming through.

[dagrizz]

2 hours ago, Davexoc said:

A move to Daventry meant watching was limited to WCML electrics running parallel to The Grand Union on a day out walking, but we did have a 0-6-0ST climbing frame in the local Rec in those days.

 

This was your climbing frame, presumably. Photo taken in Nov78.

 

 

Graham

[MarkC]

As a small boy, a big treat was being taken to Freshfield station to watch the afternoon Southport-Euston through coaches restarting from the station, usually hauled by, as I now know, a 4MT tank. Naturally, my favourite place for this was on the footbridge, standing over the track - much to my mother's bemusement...

 

Early 70s, I was regularly on the platform ends at Liverpool Lime Street. Getting to be known by staff led me to spend time in the signal box & also accompanying the pilot driver in various cabs as he went about his duties, including being put 'in the seat' & driving the 08 (or occasionally 09) shunter around the station & into the shunting neck, as it was known. On one occasion I drove a light engine 86 too. Happy days - and certainly wouldn't be permitted these days...

[doilum]

A more somber mememry. Pausing a regular long walk with grandfather to look at the rows of locomotives "in store" at Normanton shed circa 1963.

[RJS1977]

I didn't tend to get taken to see trains (other than trips to heritage lines etc), however:

 

* Walking to/from church involved crossing the Styal Line. Whilst the bridge parapet was too tall to see over, my father occasionally lifted me up to have a look.

* My grandmother lived in Portmadoc and played the organ at Capel Fron, Penrhyn (opposite the FR station) so FR locos were regularly seen on our visits, including of course Welsh Pony on the plinth.

* We moved to a bungalow where I could (just) see trains on the Styal line from the bottom of the back garden. The same year, I started attending a school which adjoined the railway line between Cheadle Hulme and Handforth so many breaks and lunchtimes were spent 'spotting'.

* We also used to travel along the A34 Kingsway (parallel to the Styal Line) on a regular basis - another opportunity for 'spotting' - most memorably the InterCity liveried 08 'Piccadilly' on a PW train.

* School holidays usually used to include one or more trips to Debenhams in Stockport (my mother seemed to save up her visits there for when we were off school...). Not exactly something I looked forwards to, but at least I usually got to see something going over the viaduct.

Edited February 5, 2022 by RJS1977

[Davexoc]

11 hours ago, dagrizz said:

 

This was your climbing frame, presumably. Photo taken in Nov78.

 

 

Graham

 

Yes that was it, Nov 78 PR    (pre-risk assessments)

Could you imagine what it would look like these days once made safe for children to play on by todays standards!

[602Squadron]

Three memories:

 

Back in the late 1950s, we lived on Baglan Road in Port Talbot. This was long before the M4 motorway was built, and there were still open fields between our back garden and the GW main line. Even though I could have been no more than 5 years old, I have vivid memories of standing at the garden fence watching the trains, particularly the sound, smoke and steam effects of the locos pulling away from the stop at Port Talbot towards Swansea.

 

In 1960 we moved to Welwyn Garden City. The main town centre car park was located between the bus and railway stations (the Howard Shopping Centre has since been built over the site) and our parents sometimes used to leave my sister and I in the car to watch the trains while they went shopping. With the aid of my Observers Book of British Railway Locomotives (which I still have), I soon learned to recognise the various types of Pacifics. The A4s were distinctive, of course, but for some reason the modernised A3s with their wing smoke deflectors made a particular impression on me, as did the A1s. Other memories include 9Fs on long coal trains, the sight and sound of Deltics passing on full power, the crackly exhaust of Craven DMUs pulling away from the station and (bizarrely) the white oval toilet windows on Thompson stock, both on the main line expresses and the lavatory composites on suburban trains, which for some peculiar reason captured my imagination.

 

In the mid and late 60s, my favourite spot for train watching was the cutting between the Twentieth Mile and Sandpit bridges, about threequarters of a mile south of WGC station. There was a path running along the eastern cutting wall which provided a good view of the passing trains, by this time of course all diesel powered but still a good variety of traction, including Deltics and Baby Deltics, Brush Type 2s and 4s, EE and BR Sulzer Type 4s, BTH Type 1s (Class 15) on the Blackbridge rubbish trains, and class 105, 116 and 125 DMUs. There were still five running lines there at that time, plus the disused remains of the Hertford single line on the up side. The cutting had been the site of the fatal collision between an Aberdeen - London express and a suburban train on 7 January 1957 - a friend from Welwyn Garden City Model Railway Club who lived in a street called By The Mount at the top of the cutting had somehow managed to get down to the accident and pinched the shovel off 60520 Owen Tudor, which had been hauling the express. I remember it sticking out of the coal heap in his back garden.

Edited February 5, 2022 by 602Squadron
Fact check

[cessna152towser]

From I was 5 till I was 15 I lived in a prefab near the "joint" line between Glasgow and Paisley Gilmour Street, and often train spotted from the long Gallowhill footbridge which at that time spanned eight tracks.    Ex-LMS and BR Standard types were standard fare, with the last of the Caley 0-6-0s being no longer seen after about 1962.    The highlight was a long mid morning parcels train hauled by one of Polmaide's Coronation Pacifics.    I believe this came from Carlisle via the Kilmarnock-Dalry link.   Polmadie's Britannias were normally only seen on summer extras such as Starlight Specials and boat trains to Ardrossan for the Isle of Man sailings.   Ex LNER types were almost unheard of until Ayr received a small allocation of B1s about 1963.   Before that I had only once seen a B1 on this stretch of  line, on a special one Saturday morning when unusually there were a few adults with cameras also at the footbridge.   The only other LNER loco I can recall seeing here was 60038 Firdaussi which was substituted one summer Friday evening on an Ardrossan boat train.

[Ben B]

9 hours ago, Davexoc said:

 

Yes that was it, Nov 78 PR    (pre-risk assessments)

Could you imagine what it would look like these days once made safe for children to play on by todays standards!

 

They've had a series in Steam magazine over the last year, where they've shown a couple of old industrials that are still in use as playgrounds.  There's at least one (with wagons) up in Scotland I think, though maybe the rules in Scotland are a little different to here.

 

Personally, I spent many happy hours with my sisters driving "Welsh Pony" at Porthmadog as a child in the 80's and 90's

 

 

As for childhood train watching, I grew up in Langley Green, near Oldbury, where I could hear the DMU's on the Brum-Stourbridge line at night.  A walk not too far from the house to playing fields (now a school) gave a good view, and trips in my pram to watch the trains rattle over Langley Green level crossing... definitely what led me to railway enthusiasm!  After we moved to Dudley I could just remember goods trains before the line was mothballed.  The odd visit to the glorious locale of Dudley Port (island platform and bus shelter on top of a cold exposed embankment) didn't do a lot for me.

 

But my other major childhood railway location was here:

 

 

Talybont, near Barmouth, West Wales.  We camped every year here when I was a kid (the line bisects the Rowan Farm camping site) and we spent ages playing here by the river.  Nothing interesting to see, train-wise, except a procession of Centro green 150's and later Regional Railways 156's, but still fond memories.  I remember a 37-hauled train once (must have been one of the final loco-hauled London trains).  The above shot was last summer, we took our own youths there so I could photograph the tour coming through, though a bit annoying those railings have appeared in the last twenty years.  That wall felt so high when I was 10!

[Darius43]

My one and only caravan holiday was at Talybont in 1973 during the “Potter’s Fortnight” holiday.  The weather was average so we took train trips in blue DMUs to Pwllheli and Aberdovey.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

Edited February 5, 2022 by Darius43

[crompton 008]

I lived at Barton Drive, Hedge End and I used to cycle up Woodhouse Lane with one of my mates from the same estate, running the gauntlet of a Jack Russell on the way up there and used to watch the regular Western or Brush 4 on the Merehead Botley stone and the regular Peak class 46 on the Fareham stone along with 1121 or 1122 on the Eastleigh Fareham passenger train which started a lifetime as a railway enthusiast, they were happy innocent days back in the 70s. 

[caradoc]

On 28/01/2022 at 22:27, unravelled said:

I continued to take  photographs there past the end of Oxford steam, through the disposal of the locos there, and the last steam on the York Bournemouth and Bournemoth York services. Up until recently I visited the bridge to see the changes, especially while the Aristotle Lane works were under way.

 

On 29/01/2022 at 00:20, Pacific231G said:

With the station master's permission I even made my very first film at Oxford station (a very short black and white silent comedy)  but by then the hated Hymeks had come.   

 

My spotting days at Oxford didn't start until 1971, so steam was gone and the hydraulics were on the way out; I never saw a Warship or 63xx at Oxford, and only managed to see 63 of the 101 Hymeks (which I rather liked). I recall walking along the path parallel to the line north of Aristotle Lane and watching one of the PWM locos assisting with lifting the Down Goods Line, never dreaming that 40 plus years later it would be re-instated !