I don’t personally remember steam (being born in 1973), but I consider myself lucky having grown up listening to the firsthand stories of my father and also good friends and other family members that remember those days.
I love hearing about it all, and it wasn’t just the trains but also all the other things that went with those days: The cars, buses, trams, ships, terraced streets, quiet roads, fairgrounds, enamel signs advertising long gone things, the warm glow of gas lights etc...
I remember seeing the tail end of some of these things before they became history or preserved in aspic as the survivors now are.
A steam moment that I’ll never forget: Christmas 1992 when volunteering at the Mid Hants found me helping out with keeping the locomotives in light steam overnight so that they would be ready for the early morning Santa trains (76017, 34105 Swanage and U class (30)506 I think).
Three of us (myself and two good friends) spent the night going from loco to loco oiling bearings, cleaning bits and throwing the odd shovelful of coal in the firebox, but making sure that they didn’t produce too much steam so that they blew off thus angering the neighbours...
I remember sitting in the drivers seat on Swanage at about 2am that freezing cold night drinking a cup of tea in the warm with us just listening to the gentle hiss of steam and the odd gurgle of water.
If you’d have been able to bottle a bit of that atmosphere you could have made a fortune.
I fully understand why people get misty eyed over those days and it’s nothing to do with modern LED lit, vinyl wrapped, sliding door efficiency.
It’s about a way of life that’s gone, looked less frantic and to me personally, quite pleasant.
If I could go back in time, then a Christmas Eve trundle through North Devon in a warm corridor coach behind an N class or a Standard Tank, with the steam heating going and people saying a cheery Happy Christmas to each other at unrushed, quiet wayside stations would be something I wished I’d experienced.
I know that life moves on but it’s fun to picture it.
Merry Christmas all
.
(Maybe too much Baileys)