Confessions of an Enthusiast

[alexl92]

Something in another thread reminded me that when I was younger, maybe in my early teens, I believed there were two Flying Scotsmans. I'd seen many photos/videos of 4472 (plus the NRM-related coverage in the early 00s) in LNER apple green, but my parents also had a photo of my older brother next to a darker green engine with smoke deflectors, numbered 60103 and also named FS
.
My conclusion was that there must be two locos, both named Flying Scotsman, and that 4472 was the famous one whilst 60103 was just another loco that someone had named after 4472.

That isn't the only one - I also thought that most steam locos that aren't preserved had simply been 'lost' somehow - like someone had bought them from BR, stored them somewhere and nobody knew what had happened since. When someone gave me a model of 6234 Duchess of Abercorn I considered going to the NRM to ask if they knew where she was now! I think the child in me wanted to believe that Scrapyards didn't really cut these beautiful engines up.

Surely I can't be the only one on here to have held some naive or embarassing beliefs - anyone up for confessing their own?

P.S. We all know that the general public tend to be pretty ignorant about how railways operate and there are other threads for that; I'm more interested in enthusiasts or those with a passing interest

 

[PeterC]

All I can recall is thinking that Sheffield was the junction on the GEML.

 

[krus_aragon]

Not so much a confession of youth, but whenever we saw a two-coach Sprinter on the North Wales Coast while driving along the A55, my father would invariably describe it to us as "Annie and Clarabel looking for Thomas".

Later, as a teenager, my first visit to Birmingham New Street was around four o'clock on a December morning, changing trains on the way to London (to catch an early flight). At the time, the station looked perfectly normal. It was only five years later, when passing through in the afternoon, that I learned that it's dark and dingy there in the daytime too!

 

[Spamcan81]

Had a family holiday in the Republic of Ireland in 1964. Took my spotting books with me as I firmly believed there would be British trains running in Ireland as they'd all go over on a train ferry. That theory was dispelled within minutes of getting off the ferry at Dun Laoghaire and sighting my first CIE B Class diesel.

 

[38Cto15E]

When I was 12 (1958) I was returning from a scouts camp at Par to the Midlands on The Cornishman, I was over the moon to see that one of the train's stops was Stratford.
At home I had a railway book called 'The World's railways and how they work', inside this book was a picture of Stratford shed and it was packed with locos, wow.

Pen and notebook on the ready after passing Cheltenham, what did I see?,not a blooming bean, wrong Stratford.

 

[d9009alycidon]

For years in my young life I had D604 "Cossack" underlined in my Ian Allen, convinced that I had seen it through the barriers at Glasgow Queen Street! Of course it must have been D6104, similar number and shape to a youngster! A bigger mystery was that another loco I had underlined was LNER Pacific 60117 "Bois Roussel", the sighting having taken place (as I thought) at Shettleston sidings while the loco was waiting to be taken into McWilliams Scrapyard. It was only recently I found out that 60117 was scrapped at Clayton & Davie of Dunston so was never in Shettleston. I started a search of locos scrapped at McWilliams and the only LNER Pacific scrapped there was 60528 "Tudor Minstrel", and the number isn't the least bit similar, the only plausable answer was that it was WD 2-8-0 90117, but for many years I thought I had seen Bois Roussel

 

[oldman]

We moved to Liverpool in 1959 and before we moved got an A-Z which still showed the Overhead Railway. My dad assured me it had been demolished, but I still believed it would still be there. Alas!

 

[RichJF]

As a kid I used to use the train to get to school. At South Croydon when I used to see the Uckfield service I used to say "It's the Happy Train".
This is because the Thumpers used to have the inverted black triangle on the front (brake van end).

I was convinced they were always the happiest trains to use and Uckfield the happiest place to go to!

 

[RichT54]

When I was a lot younger I used to think it was exciting when a steam loco had a massive wheel slip when pulling away and that the driver was doing it deliberately to show off! I was very disappointed when I learnt that it was actually dangerous and could damage the engine and the driver was trying his best to stop it happening!

 

[Mogz]

I grew up on Merseyside in the late 80s and 90s so as a young enthusiast, it was riding mainly 508s, 507s, 150s and 142s when exploring locally and (as a treat) a trip out to Runcorn on the London train.

Until I was a teenager I only rode MK1 stock on heritage line family trips.

It was on my first trip by train to Chester in about 1997 that I discovered that it and the North Wales Coast were something of a Mecca for first generation stock and things like semaphore signals that I thought were a thing of the past.

When I arrived on a 508, I noticed 101685 in BR green livery and a four coach rake of MK1 & 2 stock in RR livery stabled in a siding. I assumed they were old sets that had been dumped there long ago.

I was blown away when a 37 rolled in with another 4 coach rake heading for Crewe!

Needless to say, the Crewe and North Wales coast lines became my new focus, using Chester as a base.

I also rode 101s out to Delaware and Knutsford on the line to Manchester via Altrincham and on the Conwy Valley Line.

I was very pleased to discover that the Borderlands line, which was usually a 142 or 153 also went over to having 101s for a while shortly before they were withdrawn.

Sometimes it was a 101 and a 153 operating the line (which was and is a two unit operation), occasionally it was two 101s.

Seeing the line through the front of the train from behind the driver was brilliant as you couldn’t do that on a 142 or 153.

I was very sad to see these trains go, but glad that as a teenager I discovered that they were still alive “just in time” to have experienced them for those few years.

That said, I also rather liked the 175 Coradias when they were brand new as the leg-room was superb, so it wasn’t all bad.

I’d never have thought that the North Wales coast (or indeed anywhere) would still have loco hauled passenger trains in some form over 20 years later, though.

Happy days!

 

[TheEdge]

As a small child (younger than 10) I would put my ear to the floor and claim I could clearly hear Eurostar passing underneath our house. The fact we lived in a small town in rural Shropshire didn't seem an issue to me.

 

[sprinterguy]

Something in another thread reminded me that when I was younger, maybe in my early teens, I believed there were two Flying Scotsmans. I'd seen many photos/videos of 4472 (plus the NRM-related coverage in the early 00s) in LNER apple green, but my parents also had a photo of my older brother next to a darker green engine with smoke deflectors, numbered 60103 and also named FS
.
My conclusion was that there must be two locos, both named Flying Scotsman, and that 4472 was the famous one whilst 60103 was just another loco that someone had named after 4472.

That isn't the only one - I also thought that most steam locos that aren't preserved had simply been 'lost' somehow - like someone had bought them from BR, stored them somewhere and nobody knew what had happened since. When someone gave me a model of 6234 Duchess of Abercorn I considered going to the NRM to ask if they knew where she was now! I think the child in me wanted to believe that Scrapyards didn't really cut these beautiful engines up.

I had similar childhood experiences, funnily enough. I received a birthday card at the age of ten or so that featured a sketch of 'Flying Scotsman' and 'Mallard' on shed in BR condition: At the time I felt that this surely couldn't be correct as they carried different numbers and were visibly changed in appearance from their LNER identities that I was familiar with.

I also had a copy of Yeadon's Register of A4 Pacifics from a young age, and I read the record that 2509/60014 'Silver Link' had been cut up many years before with dismay and confusion, as I had seen that very loco with my own eyes just a handful of years previously on display at the North Tyneside Railway Museum: The loco I had seen was in fact 60019 'Bittern' cosmetically restored as its long lost sister.

Upon seeing brand new Scotrail Turbostars from a distance for the first time while passing through the Central Belt, I hadn't the foggiest idea what they were: The best my brain could come up with, based on the 1/3 door positions and gently sloped fronts, was some sort of a "diesel 321" that I wasn't previously aware of. Which I suppose sort of presaged the class 769 project by about twenty years!

In my early years of spotting at Newcastle Central station I also fell into the well worn rut of describing the mark 4 DVTs as "Class 82s", even though I knew at the time that they weren't powered vehicles.

 

[TheSeeker]

As a teenager I often rode up into the hills above Margam from Porthcawl with a group of friends on mountain bikes. We had several favourite routes and stopping points and even did some guerrilla camping at the top.

Our return route was almost always the same. Back down on some very steep roads via Pyle. It's only recently I remembered that at Pyle we usually went under the rail bridge which passes over the A48, up the side, climbed over a gate and rode along the Tondu-Port Talbot line towards Kenfig. Down the center of the tracks, not knowing it was still an active line!

I get cold sweats just thinking about it now.

 

[3141]

When I was a child we lived in a house in Southgate (North London), backing on to the Piccadilly Line between Southgate and Oakwood (originally called Enfield West). The line is above ground and we had a good view of the trains. They all consisted of what was later known as Standard Stock, built between 1922 and 1934. The cars of the earlier trains (up to and including 1925) had a different external appearance from the later ones. The window frames were inset into the main bodywork, while on the later ones the windows were more or less flush with the bodywork. Also, the ventilator scoops along the upper side of the roof were smaller on the earlier cars. In 1945/46 there were several of the earlier style of motor cars running on the Piccadilly Line, as well as trailers and control trailers, but then the earlier motor cars were all transferred to the Central Line (and I think the Northern City Line also, though I cannot remember for sure), leaving just a small number of trailers and control trailers of this style on the Piccadilly.

At the first school I attended, in Minehead in 1944-45, there was a girl named Molly, who had dark and rather prominent eyebrows. There was something about the appearance of the 1922-25 Underground cars that reminded me of Molly, and I used to call them "Mollies". My father used to tease me about this, asking "Is that train a Molly?", and he was unable to see what there was about Mollies that made their appearance distinctive. You may (or possibly not) be interested to know that the dark line along the top edge of the windows on the 1995 and 1996 stock (on the Northern and Jubilee Lines) is slightly reminiscent of Molly.

 

[PeterC]

We moved to Liverpool in 1959 and before we moved got an A-Z which still showed the Overhead Railway. My dad assured me it had been demolished, but I still believed it would still be there. Alas!

Reminds me of going on holiday to Penmaenmawr in the early 60s. Our OS map showed a network of lines in the quarries behind the village with a branch to the sidings on the main line. I got away from the family one day to have a look only to find that the rails had been replaced with a covered conveyor.

 

[Calthrop]

My first two decades of life coincided almost exactly with the first twenty years of British Railways, and the last twenty of steam in everyday routine commercial service on that system. From infancy, I have loved the steam railway scene and steam locomotives; but am so constituted that this has always been from an aesthetic rather than technical angle. Throughout childhood and adolescence, my "railwaying" was done, to a very great extent, solo. Effectively, none of my schoolfellows had this interest; and I never engaged in number-spotting -- being borderline innumerate, I saw neither point nor pleasure in the pursuit.

Thus, until very late on -- literally, till the last couple of years of BR steam -- I was more than a little vague concerning most detail about BR steam types and classes. A few particular classes, I found particularly striking, and was fairly clued-up on their "what and where"; mostly, though, there was for me a high level of vagueness: I just liked seeing the locos doing their stuff. (And modern traction of any kind, I despised, and didn't want to know anything about it.) A strong memory is held, of my lack of "savvy" about the national rail system's steam being revealed in a conversation in 1966 with a fellow-enthusiast whom I had recently met and made friends with. I was then under the delusion that the big majority of steam locos then active on BR, were of the BR Standard types of the 1950s; on my alluding to this, my new pal made clear to me, my "wrong end of the stick" situation here -- that very many steamers then still running, were in fact of classes which had first seen the light of day under the LMS. The lad was nice about it, and didn't rub it in to me about my "ignoramus" status -- but I remember feeling very foolish and ignorant; and duly "shaping up" as regards grasp of the nature and past of what was still going, for steam's last couple of years.

 

[krus_aragon]

As a small child (younger than 10) I would put my ear to the floor and claim I could clearly hear Eurostar passing underneath our house. The fact we lived in a small town in rural Shropshire didn't seem an issue to me.

Maybe it was advance tunneling work for HS2.

 

[Dr Hoo]

More like 'warm storage' for the Str*t*g*c St**m R*s*rv*!

Where exactly in Shropshire, do you mind me asking?

 

[Ashley Hill]

In 1983 we visited Swindon railway museum,I was 12 and knew very little about steam loco's. My dad (not an enthusiast) took me into the cab of one of the them (can't remember which) and tried to explain the controls. For some time I believed the reversing lever was the handbrake!

 

[DelW]

Our return route was almost always the same. Back down on some very steep roads via Pyle. It's only recently I remembered that at Pyle we usually went under the rail bridge which passes over the A48, up the side, climbed over a gate and rode along the Tondu-Port Talbot line towards Kenfig. Down the center of the tracks, not knowing it was still an active line!

I get cold sweats just thinking about it now.

I don't know what state the track was in then, but I was on a charter that took the line from Port Talbot to Tondu in 2009. By then the track was so poor and our speed so low that anyone cycling on the line would have been more at risk of riding into the back of our train than being run over by it.

 

[TheSeeker]

By then the track was so poor and our speed so low that anyone cycling on the line would have been more at risk of riding into the back of our train than being run over by it.

This was 1987/88/89!

 

[causton]

I thought Southampton was north of Northampton - I remember asking my parents why they didn't swap the names...

God knows where I thought Southampton was, as I definitely knew where Northampton is!

 

[6Gman]

Reminds me of going on holiday to Penmaenmawr in the early 60s. Our OS map showed a network of lines in the quarries behind the village with a branch to the sidings on the main line. I got away from the family one day to have a look only to find that the rails had been replaced with a covered conveyor.

I think there were still active sections of line higher up in the quarry complex - and an out of use DeWinton steam loco (amazing beasts) up there for many years. Possibly into the 1980s?

 

[6Gman]

I also rode 101s out to Delaware and Knutsford on the line to Manchester via Altrincham and on the Conwy Valley Line.

Happy days!

That's an impressive bit of track bashing !

 

[pdeaves]

When I was a youngster in the 1980s I was on a youth rail holiday in Scotland. When we got near some depot (Polmadie?) everyone swarmed to the windows to have a look; being the smallest I couldn't see out through the bodies. Seeing a class 20 the other side I yelled 'APT!'. Everyone else rushed over to see it, giving me an uninterrupted view of the depot.

 

[PeterC]

I think there were still active sections of line higher up in the quarry complex - and an out of use DeWinton steam loco (amazing beasts) up there for many years. Possibly into the 1980s?

Sadly at 11 or 12 the sidings, visible from the road, were all I could go to.

It was nearly 30 years ago when I noticed a recent edition of the OS that still showed some lines in place around Aberllefenni. We were on holiday and would be driving past Corris anyway so I took a little diversion off the main road. The slate dressing shed was still in use with rails coming our but disappearing under fairly fresh tarmac. I carried on towards the quarry to be confronted by a forklift truck carrying a narrow guage wagon. After pulling over to let it passwe carried on to see that the line was still in place underground but, presumably since the resurfacing of the road, now transferred by forklift. Certainly one of the more unusual pieces of rail operation that I have come across. (Wikipedia gives the final closure as 2002)

Since my early teens I have been fascinated by the way that you could follow the route of the Corris Railway by the fencing made up of slates wired together rather like chestnut paling even when the actual line was totally overgrown and looked like a large hedge..

 

[Merthyr Imp]

Three things:

Having read about the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway in (I think) The Wonder Book of Railways I assumed it ran between those three places, so when at the age of 10 I visited there with my father we went to New Romney and had a ride to Hythe and back. It was only later when looking at the guide book I'd purchased that I found we'd only travelled over about half of the line.

The Wonder Book of Railways again, I think it was, that had a photo of the A4 'Sir Ralph Wedgwood' damaged beyond repair during bombing in World War ll. Aged probably about 10 again, I was completely confounded to see 'Sir Ralph Wedgwood' as large as life at Grantham station - although I didn't quite think I was seeing a ghost engine - not knowing another A4 had taken the same name.

Yet again aged ten or eleven my first visits to London involved much travel on the Northern Line across central London and I assumed all London Underground lines were tube lines and were like that all the way to such remote places on the map as Hounslow West and Upminster.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

As a small child (younger than 10) I would put my ear to the floor and claim I could clearly hear Eurostar passing underneath our house. The fact we lived in a small town in rural Shropshire didn't seem an issue to me.

I had a similar thought about the Eurostar that because it went “under the sea”, when my nursery worker told us her story of her holiday to Jamaica and her trip to the beach, I asked if she heard the Eurostar underneath and she nodded unenthusiastically!

 

[Sad Sprinter]

A couple of things:

Thames Turbos actually had turbo engines in them.

The Connex South Central “Brighton Express” was one of the most prestigious trains in the world.

American “Big Boy” engines were used before 125s.

 

[32475]

In the early - mid sixties when my Mum used to take me on the train to Marylebone, I was always struck how steam engines at the buffers would get turned around afterwards. I convinced myself that crane lifting gear came down from the station roof and picked the engines up and turned them around. I must have had a works image in my mind but the theory worked for me!
Later on, my nephew got into trouble from his teacher at primary school for saying that a train used to go from London to Paris on the boat. The teacher argued that the idea was ridiculous and made a mockery of my nephew in front of his class. His Dad put things right with some photos of the Night Ferry and the teacher was left 'better educated'.