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What is your earliest memory of travelling on a train?

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mwmbwls

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More pressing concerns are dominating everybody's thoughts at the moment. Whatever the outcome of the current crisis things will never quite be the same again. Our economic capacity may be inhibited and projects, many of which we assiduously scrutinise and debate may find themselves altered in terms of timing, scope and perceived viability. We could roam freely over might have beens - however we could end up arguing about angels and pins.
Can I invite you to consider a different topic - What is your earliest memory of travelling on a train. to and from,where and when?, Can you remember the locomotive, the carriages, the compartment, the stops you got on and off at (do they still exist?), the trivia - machines that could stamp out your name etc. having the coach wheels tapped at Leicester?
 
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Sad Sprinter

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Mine is extremely boring-it was 1998 I think. I was on a 125 from Paddington to Cardiff, I think it may have been the only time I went on a Swallow livered set-although it may have just been the power car in that livery, but that livery seems to stick out in mind.

I remember my dad holding me by the hand and walking through the Great Western family carriage, I seem to rememver a little girl eating a KitKat and the carriage being a real noisy mess.

Anyway, this I definetley remember. Getting to Swindon and seeing a Sprinter in the terminating platform there. I remember that because I had Video 125's Scotland video, showcasing routes such as the West Highland Line, using a pair of Provincial livered Sprinters, and recgonising the livery. The event that does stick out was looking up at that tower block next to station, and seeing the British Rail logo on top and being in awe at what it could have possibly meant. I asked my dad, and of course couldn't understand the answer being three at the time. I always thought that memory was false, when once being 15, I just happened to be at Swindon again and looked up to see the same British Rail logo, and knew I hadn't made it up. Everytime I go past Swindon, I look up at it and smile.

I think my earliest railway memory may have been on the London Underground. I remembering being very small at Kennington, and running (unwise) from the Bank branch Southbound platform to the Charing Cross bound southbound platofrm. I seem to recall there being a large crush getting into a LUL livered 1959 stock train (how I can remember the livery I don't know) and looking into the tunnel, seeing the lights by the junction where the Kennington loop diverged from the mainline. My dad came running up to me, and I distinctly remember hearing him say to me "Don't worry, there'll be new trains soon". Why he thought it would comfort a fractious 2 year old I don't know!

When the "new" trains finally arrived, the 1995 stock Northern Line trains in 1998, I was with my dad at Stockwell station when one came screaming in, all bright and shining in its new corporate livery. I remember how excited we both were when the train came in. Sadly, I didn't have the same effect 12 years later at 15 when a brand spanking new 2009 stock train rocketed in, also at Stockwell!
 

PeterY

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I was around 5. As a family, and these are very very vague memories, we traveled from Waterloo to the IOW. I recall the ferry and one other memory is seeing a steam train going up Ryde pier. We rode on the tram on the pier.
Totally unrelated to opening thread, same holiday, on the beach we picked winkles (I think) and boiled them and how much I hated the taste of them.
 

32475

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I think the first one that I remember vividly would have been Calais to Switzerland in 1966 when I was five. My mother took me by train from Rickmansworth and what I remember really clearly was coming off the ferry gangplank and onto the low station platforms. We had to walk with our luggage across the track foot crossing, right in front of our enormous, steaming, hissing green locomotive before climbing onto our couchette carriage. For a small boy in short trousers walking right past the engine buffers, the experience was both frightening and exciting!
 

Richard Scott

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Unfortunately a 117 DMU from Cheltenham to Gloucester, remember the junction still being in where Honeybourne line diverged. Travelled behind many peaks, likely 46s, unfortunately no number information. All those lost haulages.
 

swt_passenger

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South Gosforth to Tynemouth about 1960, via Monkseaton. Probably some sort of older Tyneside EMU, 1937? I’m not at all sure of the class though, did they ever have a TOPS class?
 

Peter Mugridge

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I am just about old enough to remember being taken on green SUB / EPB units at West Croydon and Sutton. Very young age though... and also being taken on CO/CP Stock on the District Line - probably to South Kensington for the museums.
 

S&CLER

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Saturday afternoon trips from Maghull to Ormskirk market and Sunday afternoon trips from Lime Street to St Helens Junction to see my grandfather, must have been around 1952, when I was 4. I recall being fascinated by the idea of one railway crossing over another at Broad Green. Occasionally we went to St Helens Shaw Street, and always looked out for a little green 0-4-0 tank called Peasley in the Pilkington's sidings. My main impression was of how indescribably filthy and encrusted with soot everything was in those post-war years. I was also taken to Birkenhead to see friends of my mother, and nagged her to take the Mersey Railway rather than the ferry. I recall the distinctive acrid smell of the underground stations; mum said it was ozone caused by electrical discharges (arcing). Could she have been right? And no trip to Southport was complete without a ride on the Lakeside Miniature Railway.
 

DelW

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Most of my early railway travel memories are quite non-specific in date, place, or both, but there's one I can be definite about. My father took me into Birmingham city centre to see the recently restored City of Truro and Caledonian 123 being displayed. He liked all things GWR, so I imagine City of Truro was the draw for him, but I was much more impressed by No123 with its huge single drivers and bright blue livery, quite unlike anything I'd ever seen before.
For many years I was unsure where or when this had been, but an internet search shows that it was at Moor Street in 1960:
https://warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrms3885.htm
( picture of no 123 at Moor St on warwickshirerailways.com)
 

Lucan

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LU, Tooting Broadway to central London. Would have been 38 Tube Stock.
 

AndyB28

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I have a very vague recollection of being taken to Birmingham from Coventry by old family friends. I would assume it was New Street we arrived in but the only tangible memory is a very strange looking train that I'm now fairly sure was a Blue Pullman set (class 251/261). I would have been only about four or five years old at the time so we're talking 1968 or '69. Perhaps someone could confirm if these sets did indeed work out of New Street?
 

Spamcan81

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A journey from Hitchin to Chichester in the late 1950s not long after I'd started primary school. Don't remember much about the journey into London but I do remember the ride on a London trolleybus - fascinating as I'd never seen one before - and finally the trip out of Victoria on a green train with no loco on the front - an e.m.u. obviously. One thing that sticks in my mind was that Victoria smelled quite different to Kings Cross. No doubt due to the relative lack of steam traction in the former.
 

brstd4260

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Sitting in my pushchair while travelling in the guards compartment from Enfield Town to Bush Hill Park behind an GER L77/LNER N7 running bunker first, about 1959. Later on travelling on my own up to Liverpool Street aged about 9 to go train spotting (Who would do that now!). I remember the Liverpool - Enfield Town line was electrified by then, but there were still (very dirty) steamers on the East Anglian side of the station. Also remember the last family holiday we took by train, behind Cardiff Castle on the way to Weston Super Mare. If I remember rightly the Castle was in good condition and was nice and clean
 

oxfordray1

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Easter 1994 or 1995 when I was a kid. Sheffield to Grindleford for a family walk. I remember being both amazed and scared by the sheer length of the Totley tunnel. Cannot remember the class, but we called it the 'bumbly train'. Even now we still refer to the Northern Hope Valley stoppers as the 'bumbly train' even though it is of course now a much better quality of ride.
 

PeterC

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Difficult as some "memories" from my pre school days may be down to my mother telling me, in later years, how I behaved but I can recall clouds of steam as we joined a train at Paddlington to visit my aunt in Wales. I don't remember anything else about the journey nor about the one trip that I had on the Mumbles Railway, which closed when I was 8. I must have liked it as I was in tears when I heard it was closing.
 

delt1c

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catching a 126 from St Enochs in Glasgow to Steventson to visit my Great Grandmother. Remember my mother telling me the station was closing the next week
 

Grumpy Git

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Edit: Talyllyn and Vale of Rheidol narrow gauge approx. 1972 and 1973 respectively.

Main line, class 104 Buxton to Manchester Piccadilly, either late 1977 or early 1978. I couldn't understand why there was no loco on the front!
 
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Bobdogs

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It must have been late fifties or very early sixties. It was on a steam train from Moor Street to Spring Road in, if I remember correctly was a compartment coach, as relatives lived nearby.
Slightly off topic, I remember my mum dragging me across the concourse at Snow Hill from the main entrance to the side entrance into Livery Street and not letting me go and look at the trains.
I also remember Queens Drive which divided New Street and, if my memory is correct, one side you had the old Midland Railway and the LNWR on the other.
Much more interesting then I would have thought.
 

L+Y

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ELR diesel gala in about 1995- vividly remember an all-green Deltic coming in to Ramsbottom station. I'd have been 3/4.

Also got vague memories of "cabbing" a 31 on an engineering train at Parbold station at about the same time, with my dad. I vividly remember, as a small child, being terrified the loco would shoot off to Southport and I'd have no way back!
 

trebor79

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Class 10x Glasgow Queen Street to Kenzie. Sat with my dad and little brother eating mint humbugs and looking at the view through the cab windows. I remember it was a bright sunny day and worrying that my brother would choke on his humbug.
About the same time, maybe a bit earlier being taken into Glasgow by my 14 year old niece, and all the lights going out in the tunnel into Queen Street.
 

Harpers Tate

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1957 give or take, age about 4. Ponthir to Newport on a DMU. Front seat, with Mum. Was invited into the cab to "steer" it (the handbrake wheel, of course, not that I knew it at the time) across the pointwork into Newport. Things ain't what they used to be!
 

30907

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Two memories which both must be from 1956-58 (so I was 4-6):
1. Standing on the up platform at Bromley South waiting for the train to Shortlands and seeing on the other side of the island platform (present day platform 2) a green corridor carriage. (We must have been shopping and ended up at the bottom of High Street so unusually decided to catch the train not the bus home).
2. Heading to Westgate-on-sea for our holiday and looking out of the window when the train was stopped by signals on Luton viaduct in Chatham. The A2 below was solid; delays into Gillingham were the norm back then as well.
 

Diplodicus

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My Mam and I travelled from Paddington to Neath in 1951. Despite being very hard up, we had lunch in the dining car. The steward had walked through the train beforehand issuing tickets for lunch and then later came back to announce "first sitting". I remember the GWR crest on plates. It was my first experience of pea soup and I can recall Mam teaching me how to use a soup spoon properly.

A couple of years later as my Mam's health worsened, my Dad took me to Paddington and placed me in the guards van which had a caged section for parcels. I had a label to identify me and he paid someone half-a-crown to "keep an eye on me". On arrival at Neath, my Aunt Valmai was waiting to collect me but I was so dirty from playing (especially with a motor bike, also in the cage) that she had to put me under the platform tap to get the worst off before being allowed into her fiancé's Ford Pop (Duw, there's posh!).
 

ChiefPlanner

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Neath (General) to Aberavon Seaside / Beach in a brand new class 120 with yellow whiskers and gleaming green paintwork. Return on a filthy maroon non corridor , steam hauled train. I mean filthy.

Thence the pleasure of the 251 to Ammanford , - Western Welsh blue and cream semi coach.

I had previously footplated an ex GWR 72xx at GCG and Ammanford Goods Yard , it took a huge effort to get me off them.
 

Blinkbonny

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Late fifties/early sixties, travelling back from Whitby to Middlesbrough along the old coast line. Our steam engine got stuck in a tunnel and we had to sit in darkness for what I now realise to be a banking engine to come and rescue us.

On later journeys I was always immensely disappointed when lights stayed on in carriages in tunnels. :(
 

Grumpy Git

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OT, but I remember going inside the signal box at Darley Dale about 1966 and watching a Peak hauled St. Pancras to Manchester Central express go by.
 
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matchmaker

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Two memories from the early 1960s. Opening the droplight using the leather strap in a non-corridor service out of Glasgow St Enoch, sticking my head out, and getting a smut in my eye.

Visiting my aunt and uncle in Aberdeen. A4 out of Buchanan Street!
 

rogercov

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I have a very vague recollection of being taken to Birmingham from Coventry by old family friends. I would assume it was New Street we arrived in but the only tangible memory is a very strange looking train that I'm now fairly sure was a Blue Pullman set (class 251/261). I would have been only about four or five years old at the time so we're talking 1968 or '69. Perhaps someone could confirm if these sets did indeed work out of New Street?
It wouldn't be a Blue Pullman on its regular service, unless it was a "special".
The Birmingham Pullman ran from Paddington, via Leamington Spa, into Birmingham Snow Hill, but the service ceased in 1966.
The Blue Pullman sets continued to be used between Paddington and Bristol, and they introduced an Oxford service around 1967, but as far as I know it never worked north of Oxford.
 

Sprinter107

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The Blue Pullman from Wolverhampton to Birmingham Snow Hill and Paddington finished at the beginning of March 1967 when main line trains were withdrawn. They were used on special excursion trains at weekends tho, taking them on routes and to places not normally visited.
 
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