When spotting which trains made you think “Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

[TheSignalEngineer]

1 hour ago, Wickham Green too said:

A 'Monocabine', monsieur ...... like zis : - 

... or like zat, peut etre ?                            ( Thionville, 22/9/90 )

Not those but I did see them on a later trip. It was around Thionville when we were on a cycle trip in 1991, en route from Luxembourg to Verdun at the time.

 

The one going into Austerlitz in 1979 was a Paris - Orleans Railway 2D2-5500 class, actually twin cab with nose ends built in the 1930s, They were built by CEM, a Brown Boveri subsidiary. The last one was withdrawn not long after our trip and one is now preserved in a museum.

 

Edited February 23 by TheSignalEngineer

[Pendle Forest]

On 22/02/2024 at 15:28, Artless Bodger said:

Not really given to going spotting, except a couple of trips to London to do the main termini with a school friend, so Deltics at Kings Cross, Westerns at Paddington. Living in Maidstone it was otherwise a diet of emus in green or blue.

 

Early sightings that stick with me were:

 

A family wedding reception in Ilford, the venue overlooked the railway, strange to see trains like at home but powered by overhead wires.

 

First trip to Margate by train (we'd used the M&D coach before - cheaper, until I got travel sick) and seeing Maunsell and Wainwright at Ashford (check the Observers book when we got back home).

 

A holiday at Bracklesham Bay holiday camp, we went to Portsmouth one day for the Victory, waiting for the train back to Chichester at Portsmouth and Southsea HL a dark green dmu came through on a service, I recall the racket the exhausts up the end of the carriages made compared to our quiet emus. Next birthday I got the Triang Met Cam dmu (rather than the Triang emu - looked too old fashioned). (Some years later, a holiday in Hastings introduced me to the much nicer sound of a Hastings unit, or two).

 

A holiday in Weymouth area, 1968 I think, seeing a maroon warship in the sidings at Waterloo, in my ignorance I thought it must be a Midland region loco. Later on the return from holiday, saw a blue one at Basingstoke (Greyhound iirc but I wouldn't put money on it). 

 

Later in life, returning from work in Maidenhead one misty evening, walking from platform 6 at Reading, saw ahead along 8 a class 58, which departed westwards as I approached, so only really saw the end, they were new at the time and I only knew about them from magazines. Didn't see any more 58s until the Fertis (?) ones parked at OOC.

 

Seeing the APT at Carlisle on my first trip to Scotland.

 

Discovering thumpers still lived (just) in NI when my wife got a job over there. We could hear them across Belfast Loch sometimes on services to Larne.

We saw an APT slide into Preston platform 6 on what would have been, probably, one of the last set of test runs.  It was a full double set.  By that stage the remaining active sets would appear randomely between service trains so it was a complete fluke.

 

There was a special APT ticket booth on platform 3 at the foot of the main access ramp and special 'APT Coach x' marking had been painted the length of at least platform 3 where the doors would line up.  I don't remember seeing them on 4 though. 

 

It looked awesome snaking it's way round the curves into the platform and compared to a class 108 belching diesel in the adjacent platform, it was truly 'the future'

[Tom Burnham]

2 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

A 'Monocabine', monsieur ...... like zis : - 

... or like zat, peut etre ?                            ( Thionville, 22/9/90 )

Ah yes, stayed overnight at Thionville in 1970.  Slightly frustrating from a railfan perspective as the door from the booking office to the platform was only unlocked a minute or two before the train was due.  Seemed very old school even 50+ years ago 

[Wickham Green too]

22 minutes ago, Tom Burnham said:

...the door from the booking office to the platform was only unlocked a minute or two before the train was due.  Seemed very old school even 50+ years ago 

You obviously haven't travelled by East Midlands from St.Pancreas recently !

[Artless Bodger]

11 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

St.Pancreas

Ah someone who spells it like me!

 

It was the most dingy, unkempt looking terminal in London that I visited with my school friend Mac in the early 70s, we didn't stay long, Kings Cross was far more attractive (and he was an LNER fan and modeller). My one abiding memory of St Pancreas was hearing a loud splat, looking around we could see an object - we assumed a railman had chucked something across the track onto the platform, but on closer inspection it was a dead pigeon which had just plummeted from the roof girders.

[Nearholmer]

It was frequently more or less completely deserted too. Brimming with atmosphere, especially when it got dark, but not exactly brimming with trains, passengers of staff.

[Wickham Green too]

It may have been dingy & unkempt characterful back then, but it was a PROPER railway station rather than half out of bounds to mere mortals ( domestic passengers ) and half dingy and unkempt without ANY architectural merit.

[Peter Eaton]

16 minutes ago, Artless Bodger said:

a dead pigeon which had just plummeted from the roof girders.

(St. P.) Its still there & turned to stone.

 

It was my get off station in London from Derby or Nottingham & regret (as we all do) not taking in more of the place & photographing  our Peaks there. 

[Jeremy Cumberland]

I loved the old booking hall at St Pancras. Seemingly tucked away in a corner, generally deserted and all wood panelling with just tiny windows in front of each booking clerk. Very different from the glass fronted counters at Euston and Kings Cross. I suppose its been turned into something else now.

 

The most remarkable station feature of all on my travels was the departure boards at Glasgow Central. Complete panels of destinations and stops put by hand into windows above the booking hall.

This picture shows only a small part - there were 13 platforms.

[Vistisen]

As a kid, I grew up taking Hastings line diesels to Charing Cross when visiting London. Most childhood holidays were taken by car. One of my golden memories is of when my dad (a post office senior executive) had to go to Edinburgh for a three-day trip. BR had an offer where if one person bought a full ticket, up to three others could go for £5. So, Mum, dad, my sister, and I went on an HST for the first time ever. I must have been about 11. It was amazing. While my dad was working, the Scottish Post office chairman’s Ford Granada and chauffeur drove the rest of us around Scotland on trips. The most magical bit was eating dinner in the restaurant on the train on the way home. Most of the other passengers eating there seemed to be American and Japanese tourists. The waiter started a running joke that we were royals travelling incognito. My dad, who was always quick on the uptake for a joke joined in. By the end all the kitchen staff were in on it and making the most of the reactions of the other tourists when bowing and walking backwards in our presence!

[Talltim]

Nowadays, having lived in Chesterfield and working in Sheffield for 20ish years, seeing an electric train is a novelty. I was recently at Doncaster and having trains in the platform and still being able to hear the announcements was a shock

Edited February 24 by Talltim

[Halvarras]

When I got interested in Cornwall's railways in 1966 the only diesel-electrics around had six wheels and moved wagons around in goods yards. I was in a scout group at the time and during the last week of July 1967 Cornish scout groups were booked into the scouting centre at Gilwell Park, the railhead for which was Chingford. A special train was provided which took D827 'Kelly' around London to reach that destination in the early hours of 25th July, and having woken up in time my bleary eyes saw D101, D5185, D7645, D5525, D8202/7 and D8405, with E3172 noted during a day trip. All totally 'foreign' to me of course! But astonishingly not a single Class 37 or 47 - my first of the latter, D1677 'Thor', would turn up on home turf two months later.

 

The next time I managed to get off the WR was early November 1969, to Stafford to visit relatives, although by road. They lived within easy walking distance of the WCML south of Stafford station so the first afternoon (and encouraged by my uncle, who got me into the modelling-making hobby in the first place), I went to see the local trains at an overbridge. For some reason the 'juice' was off so only diesels were seen - by then D1709 and D1856 were no great shakes but D5015 on a slow northbound PW train was a first, then came a big green whistling thing with full yellow ends on a southbound passenger working, which increased the excitement by getting held at a signal a distance away, and when the driver had eventually finished his conversation at the post and climbed back into the cab, D218 'Carmania' whistled under the bridge and away to London. Awesome - and another named 'first'! While we were in Stafford I'd get to Crewe and Derby and go around both Works - more 'firsts', including Class 20s, 50s and 76s and a last look at D1733 in XP64 blue at Crewe - but at that time no WR Class 37s were seen there, while Derby provided D2506 and D5381 of note (the latter would be the only BRCW Type 2 I'd ever see with a pre-TOPS number). Derby station proved just as interesting that day as my first Class 37 (at last!), 6807, went through on a freight one way while my second Class 31, 5825, did likewise in the opposite direction. The infamous D326 arrived light-engine and D8000 + D8063 passed by as well.

 

The 1960s were wrapped up in style as at the end of the following month, between Christmas and New Year, another family visit to Camberley enabled my first visit to London termini via Waterloo, so a few more Class 31s and 37s in the bag and at Kings Cross of course, my first 'Deltic', D9020 'Nimbus'. Only much later did I discover that the last green one, D9014, had gone blue the previous month, so I never saw a green Class 55 in service (other than 55002 just the once, in 1981). The 1970s were onwards and upwards from there!

 

It sometimes surprises me to remember that during these spotting trips over the two months of 1969 I was only 16 and travelling around unfamiliar territory by myself. However the railway timetables held no fear and, well, it was just a different world back then. 

 

 

[MidlandRed]

I have lots of these but I’ll limit it to two related experiences and another involving DMUs (or bog carts; bug units; slime cars and whatever other disparaging names older boys who chased steam and other ‘real locos’ at Snow Hill circa 1965/66 called them!!)

 

First the DMU - I first started spotting train numbers/getting interested at the tender age of about 7 or 8, but growing up in the north of the West Midlands my usual fare was LMR - ‘bog carts’ of the Metro Cammell 2 car and 3 car variants, BRCW of 2 and 3 car and even the more exotic Park Royal and GRCW 2 car units - even Cravens - usually 3 car. There was even a Cravens parcels car (M55998). A (much) longer walk over to the WR line yielded not only steam, mostly freight but the single car GRCW, single car parcel units, Derby Suburban 3 cars (many of which remained ununderlined in my books for many years….), and the cross country Swindon and GRCW DMUs. Some of the Derby suburban 3 cars (later 116) were notably in a funny washed out and unlined green colour - seemed really like second class DMUs to us. Don’t worry though, I loved the EE type 4s and all the other diesel, steam and electrics around the region but I was also interested in DMUs, as were most of my mates - in fact if you weren’t, as most of the short and medium distance passenger trains were formed of them, the idea of shunning them felt like shooting yourself in the foot as a train spotter!! Anyway Imagine my surprise at the age of about 11 at Bham New St when a rather unusual almost art deco looking unit appeared - yes it was a Wickham, which had somehow managed to find its way all the way from Norwich. It wasn’t the only time either as a saw at least two of them this way!!! Not sure what service they were on but the usual exotica from the far east was the 1E04 train, which was an express passenger Birmingham to Norwich and vice versa, which yielded an AIA as we referred to them - often a 1600 hp one (D5545; D566x). The empty stock, still showing 1E04 used to wend its way around the north suburbs of Birmingham to get itself to New Street facing the right way after carriage servicing. 
 

The other involves diesel hydraulics. Now I had one Western underlined in my Combined for several years which I’d seen in the tail end of their reign on Paddington to Birkenhead trains - the next time my father took me there I saw D1714 on a similar train…. still memorable as an express passenger loco! So a family holiday to Holcombe (a short walk from the sea wall at Parsins Tunnel) in summer of 1967, resulted in two weeks of spotting on the sea wall between Dawlish and Teignmouth along with trips to Newton Abbott!! Not only did I see more than 2/3 of the Westerns and Warships, there was even more exotica with D63xx, 204 hp shunters and I even managed to underline some of those elusive WR DMUs (many of which were in plain blue with white cab rooves and syp). I do recall a very tatty green Warship hauling a rake of coaches through the carriage washer opposite Newton Abbott station and looking inordinately shiny for a couple of minutes, until the water ran off and returned to that washed out green with chunks of finish missing that those which had not been repainted for a year or two often appeared in. So the bragging rights were absolutely huge back home - until - imagine my shock a few weeks later when I saw D846 at BNS - even more shocking whilst with a couple of mates and some girls at Perry Hall Playing Fields, North Birmingham, when a triple header Warship, one green, one maroon and one blue motored slowly past from the Soho direction going towards Bescot….. suffice to say this caused an almost apoplectic shock to the loco spotters amongst us - we didn’t know the LMR had cast caution to the wind and was going to have Warships on the new Paddington expresses from New St. I think the young ladies just put up with a couple of their friends having very strange reactions to certain trains 😀 oh yes the locos were D842 (maroon), D845 (green) and D847 (blue, fye). That Devon holiday had one other abiding memory, sorry all, but of the bus enthusiast kind (yes I’m one of those as well 🤣)!! A trip unaccompanied on a Devon General early Leyland Atlantean bus from Teignmouth to Holcombe. The first five minutes was in first or second gear climbing out of Teignmouth with the incomparable roar of the 0600 engine and Leyland’s whiny semi auto transmission reverberating off the walls of the front gardens. It’s still one of the most memorable trips I’ve ever been on a bus (sorry for the interlude….)

 

Notebook entry below for interest re the Warships in the West Midlands (bottom left) - you’ll see D839 was spotted at Great Barr station (now renamed, somewhat more accurately as Hamstead!!) a couple of days later, and D846 at BNS on 1M11. My writing wasn’t bad at 11 yrs of age - you should see it when bunking sheds though 🤣🤣

 

Edited February 24 by MidlandRed

[Tom Burnham]

11 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

I loved the old booking hall at St Pancras. Seemingly tucked away in a corner, generally deserted and all wood panelling with just tiny windows in front of each booking clerk.

 

In keeping with the Gothic Revival architectural style, the booking office had linenfold panelling, probably in oak.  It's included in the station and hotel's Grade 1 listing by Historic England, so I hope it survives.  I believe the booking office is now a restaurant.

[Tom Burnham]

Circa 1963-4 a couple of friends and I used to spot at St Mary Cray or Sevenoaks, where we saw plenty of Kent Coast electrics and the occasional diesel.  For a change we'd once in a while go to Bethnal Green - also mainly electric but with overhead wires.  Some of the units were very similar, but exotics included the sliding door Shenfield units and most remarkable of all the Clacton corridor units painted lined maroon. And even some of the Eastleigh designed units had Gresley bogies.

[pH]

12 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

The most remarkable station feature of all on my travels was the departure boards at Glasgow Central. Complete panels of destinations and stops put by hand into windows above the booking hall.

This picture shows only a small part - there were 13 platforms.

During the evening rush hour, the guys putting up and taking down those boards certainly earned their money!

[Darius43]

Standing on the platform at Northolt Tube Station in the early 1970s and seeing a Hymek go past on the adjacent BR lines.  I knew it was a Hymek because it matched the picture in my Magpie Pocket Book of Trains.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

[billy_anorak59]

A trip to from the North West to London Victoria (by car, parked at Cockfosters, LU to Victoria) to pick up my cousin, who'd been abroad somewhere.

Now this was exotic - the land of the 'Night Ferry' and the 'Golden Arrow' - can't wait!

 

On to the concourse and...    oh.

 

Row upon row of what looked like Mk1 coaches with two red rectangular lights in the middle of the corridor connections all sitting at the buffer stops.

How disappointed was I ?

Being used to Class 08s, 24s, 25s, 40s and 47s this was a strange land indeed.

 

[Nearholmer]

There always seemed to be a cultural divide among enthusiasts in the early 70s: those from the southern regarded DMMUs and DHMUs as utterly uninteresting, almost beneath contempt, and certainly not worth the bother of learning class-designations, spotting features etc; those from elsewhere were similarly disposed towards EMUs, they just didn’t “get” them.

 

 

 

Edited February 26 by Nearholmer

[adb968008]

I grew up in the north west. 
We were spoiled really, we had it all in the decade from 78-88.. anything derelict, dying or clapped out met its end in the Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire or Merseyside lines..

 

03,08,20,24,25, 31,33,37,40,44,45,46,47,50,55,56,60,76,81-90,92

even things like an 01, 04,05 could be found in industrial use,  And 35,42,52 were at Bury. There was still more than half a decade of industrial steam to go at as well.

 

We had 3rd rail (Liverpool and Bury), OHLE EMUs. (Even DC with 506’s) and later years even the 303,305, 308 and 309 met their final years in the pennines.

 

33 and 50’s even had dailies for a while, and the 55’s died out on transpenines…as did 124’s, 45’s,46, and the Generator 47/4’s…

 

so only real rarity was 26/27,73… and 58’s were a bit uncommon too…... of that the 73/0’s ended up in Merseyside, 26 and 58 would appear on Railtour and NNW days,… Thumpers.. yep several on railtours… EPBs.. Horwich speciality.

 

37/9’s.. yes the slugs went Cardiff to Westhoughton every week.

There was even a BR Blue 03 shunting at Salford years after BR exited them from Birkenhead.

 

When it came to second gen units, all of them were present, even the 159’s went up the wcml to Scotland and back for finishing.

The north west / yorkshire wasnt Kansas, but we we are on the road to the Emerald city for sure… The wizard of Oz, he worked at Crewe Diesel… knocking out celebrity/rare 47’s for the Bolton GUS parcels…

47461/47475/47484/47500/47522/47541/47561/47573/47579/47821/47835 all did a turn on the Bolton vans… developed a cult following on tuesday / thursday nights at Lever st footbridge, Bolton waiting to see what you would get.

 

which meant the only really north west holy grail would be a 27 or a 91… of that 27059 made it to Preston, and 91’s came out of Crewe.

Edited February 26 by adb968008

[Artless Bodger]

7 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

There always seemed to be a cultural divide among enthusiasts in the early 70s: those from the southern regarded DMMUs and DHMUs as utterly uninteresting, almost beneath contempt, and certainly not worth the bother of learning class-designations, spotting features etc; those from elsewhere were similarly disposed towards EMUs, they just didn’t “get” them.

 

 

 

Though from Kent, I found the diesel mechanicals had their advantages (if a bit lacking in acceleration), when the driver left the blinds up - Ipswich to Lowestoft and Lowestoft to Norwich  and Ely were fun trips, Newcastle to Carlisle also. After a geology field course in Cornwall I managed Penzance to Plymouth with a front view, quite enlightening. The heating, when it worked, was good too if a bit fuggy sometimes. After waiting in a cold wind on Maidenhead station in winter evenings, the DMU back to Reading was always cozy. As to knowing the classes, well there were so many reformings - always a surprise that the Paddington suburban units were not fixed rakes like the EPB/HAP/CEPs of my home area, when a student in the mid 70s I saw blue / blue and grey and white vehicles in the same train sometimes. SR codes tripped off the tongue but the class numbers for DMUs were hard to remember. As the Pressed Steel units were withdrawn for asbestos in the late '80s we got some oddities to my eyes, 101s I could identify, but some others appeared a few times, and I never did pin down what they were (had end windows in the guard's compartment). Then Networkers supplanted my favourite DEMUs (3H, 3R, 3D), but I did get to travel on the 210 4 car a few times, decent engine sound, not the straining burbles of bus engines!

 

Ultimately though, favourites or not, any train is better than no train.

[Dagworth]

I grew up in East Anglia though my family originated on the southern end of the West Coast Main Line. My first real memories of trains are probably being with my cousins in the park at Berkhamsted and at my Great Nan's house that was alongside the line at North Wembley where we could stand at the end of the back garden and watch the trains. So my earliest memories of "real" trains were ones with pantographs, and a constant procession of them. The first loco name I ever remember seeing was 86206 City Of Stoke On Trent. My dad was an enthusiast too and took me to various museums and preserved lines from a very early age but they weren't the same as express trains on the big railway.

 

I didn't know about train spotting until I joined the scouts in Stowmarket and met some other boys there that were train spotters, mainly on a walk into town one evening alongside the railway when they were talking about a 'foreign' 47 and I didn't understand what they meant (a non-Stratford one it turned out). From then on I was hooked on numbers and learning what all these locos were, discovering in the process that my Diesel was in fact a Triang Hornby Class 31. From then on my evenings and weekends found me a very regular visitor to Stowmarket station, then joining the local railway club too. 

 

My Grandma lived in London and I was allowed to go to London to see her without Mum so that was the first outings to the big termini on my own, watching the overhead wires into Liverpool St, discovering that I only needed the last three numbers of any Eastern EMU, then Euston was heaven, my beloved electrics! I cleared all the ACs for sight long before any diesel class... Paddington was strange long things with flat fronts, but thankfully all the right way up now! As for Clapham Junction... so many trains, where do you look, at what on earth was that strange shaped thing in the sidings next to the shed? (the PEP unit) and Cromptons and EDs, very odd to my Anglian eyes, used to 31s, 37s and 47s. 

 

Getting into the Midlands via Peterborough where we found Deltics then further north and west to Sheffield, 20s, 40s, PEAKS, things I'd only ever seen in photos, that couldn't describe the whistle or thrum of the EE beasts. Further afield once I joined BR in 1985 and had free travel, now Scotland beckoned, 47/7s, 26s, 27s, that was where I really felt a foreigner railwaywise. Meanwhile my electric locos now came to me with the electrification of the GE mainline to Norwich

 

I moved to Charing Cross in 1988 and became a driver, by now I was not so much into number collecting, having graduated to haulage instead, but gradually lost a lot of interest by the mid 90s as it settled into being a job instead of a hobby. I have never stopped looking at loco numbers but I very rarely write anything down now. I left the railway in 97 and moved to Cheltenham. I don't think I did anything railway related for 2 or three years, then finally made my way into Cheltenham Model Centre and it all started again. Dagworth was reborn, a reincarnation of a layout I'd had in a caravan in my Mum's garden, and I joined DEMU and then a very young RMweb in its first days of existence. The rest is history and while I still look at trains and will normally point the phone camera at anything that isn't a unit my main interest now is recreating those glory years in my mind of the West Coast Main Line with Ravensclyffe and my early years on the railway with Ipswich.

 

Andi

 

 

 

Edited February 27 by Dagworth

[EddieB]

A Kansas City* Southern SD40-2 waking up to find itself in Sulphur Springs, Texas?  (I fear I'm taking the reference too literally!)

 

 

*Just to confuse matters, Kansas City isn't in Kansas, it's in Missouri - but at least the Americans spell "Sulphur" correctly in the name of that place!

[F-UnitMad]

On 26/02/2024 at 18:35, Artless Bodger said:

in the mid 70s I saw blue / blue and grey and white vehicles in the same train

Tyseley were good at that with their Bugs, too. 🤣

[pH]

3 hours ago, EddieB said:

A Kansas City* Southern SD40-2 waking up to find itself in Sulphur Springs, Texas? 

We’re regularly getting KCS engines here in Canada now with the CPR - KCS merger. (Still haven’t seen an engine in the merger colour scheme yet.)