I’ve really enjoyed reading this thread, so I thought I’d contribute my own memories of bashing in the 1980s.
I first got interested in bashing around 1986, aged 13. By around 1991, I had moved on to other pursuits, a common refrain in this kind of story. For me, Sprinterisation replacing what remained of the local diesel haulage coincided with my late teens, and my interest in railways took something of a back seat as a result. I don’t have any of my books and photos, so all of this is from memory.
I lived in Chorley in Lancashire in those days. I didn’t have a lot of spare cash, like most teenage boys, and so I couldn’t afford long distance trips. The only exception to that was a couple of trips a year with the school railway society, usually doing a regional rover weekly ticket.
My regular bashing, therefore, was initially centred on Preston, mainly because it was nearby, cheap and quick to get to and handy for meeting friends. I have read lots of stories on this thread and others of discerning bashers who would only follow 40s, or whatever they preferred. In Preston in those days, you had a straight choice of electrics and 47/4s, with the occasional 31 hauled service, although from memory they seemed irregular. So even if it had occurred to me to be choosy, I wouldn’t have had much opportunity.
The most interesting and regular diesel haulage at the time was 47/4s on the Preston-Blackpool portion of Euston-Blackpool services. We would only ever go as far as Kirkham. I think this was probably on grounds of cost, but maybe we also wanted to spend as much time as possible spotting at Preston. It was a pretty interesting station to hang out at in the 1980s. There were usually at least a couple of 47s waiting for work, and sometimes an 08 hidden in the siding at the North end of the station (known as Bakehouse or similar I believe). I can’t remember any of the numbers of the 47s that did this work, but I imagine they would all have been from Crewe Diesel and certainly the same ones came up again and again.
Most of the loco hauled traffic was electric, of course, but even there an occasional 81 or 85 would liven up the stream of 86, 87 and, later, 90s. Although I did collect electric haulages, it didn’t grab me in anything like the same way as the diesels, and we never did short electric hops to Wigan or Lancaster.
I only have two clear memories of 31 haulage, both involving long delays.
One was a train I was taking home from Preston to Chorley, which failed somewhere around Leyland on a warm day. We were stuck there for some hours. Fortunately there ws a buffet trolley on the service, and the young woman running it let us have free reign. Oddly, I can clearly recall going for a piece of fruitcake, wrapped in cellophane and sweating slightly. No mobile phones of course, so I arrived home much later than planned to my anxious parents.
The other was a very rare midweek excursion. Being a schoolboy I would have to be home by nine, and I worked out that I just had enough time to take in an evening run behind a 31 to Preston (or possibly Leyland) and back. One week I got adventurous and decided to see if I could double up by taking a train down to Blackrod which on occasion produced a 31 and picking up the diagrammed 31 back from there. Alas it was a total failure. The DMU down to Blackrod held no interest, and I was most disappointed to see the 31 sail through non-stop, stranding me there for an hour. Cue a shamefaced phone call home explaining why I was late, and why I was several miles away from where I ought to have been.
As a postscript, I took a train from Chorley to Manchester Victoria on Saturday evening around 2003, and was delighted to find it top and tailed by a pair of Class 31s. I remember the wistful feeling I had pulling into Victoria for what I felt sure would be the last time on a loco hauled service train.
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