My Must-Have Train Spotting Accessory

I go to the gym. It’s boring but I think it’s probably a good idea overall. I am not known - at the gym or anywhere else, for that matter - for being fashionably turned out. I wear what I have always worn; cheap trainers, tee-shirt and whatever shorts are available. I almost certainly stand out as being amazingly non-descript. What amazes me is what people carry around with them in there.

In addition to the co-ordinated specialist gym wear, you can be sure that at any one time there will be towels, drinks bottles, books, mobile phones, i-pods, paper tissues [left behind on the machines in the drink holder recess - lovely], various performance monitoring pieces of equipment [don’t ask me], bags [there are lockers], bunches of keys, head bands and other stuff for keeping hair in place, hats [HATS! - IT’S INSIDE AND IT’S SWEATY], print-out gym programme sheets and an outer layer that has to be peeled off whilst trying not to fall off the tread mill.

Then there are the guys who have gone off at a tangent and decided that they should make the gym a retirement activity and maybe have been nudged in that direction by medical advice, but who have never taken regular exercise since compulsory cross-country at school, and who suddenly turn up in a pair of walking trousers, a shirt with a collar, a short sleeved pullover knitted by their wife some time during the previous millennium and a pair of grubby white plimsolls, circa 1969. Perhaps they make me look really cool by comparison, but on the other hand, maybe not.

Cold and unloved at Barry scrapyard on the last day of 1967 in the photo – and that’s me on top, as well, displaying the statutory anorak, of course. The alternative duffle coat never really appealed to me, but I have long since upgraded to cagoules, which had not been invented then. What strikes me about this pose, however, is the short length of my trouser leg. That must have been a bit draughty. At least they would not get snagged whilst clambering over any rusting hulks that happened to be lying in my path.

Not long ago, I enhanced my train spotter’s kit by buying a pair of goggles. I should have done this 55 years ago, but, as I’ve already admitted and various family members will confirm, I’m not the quickest on the uptake, when it comes to being hip. They would have been very useful between

1960 and 1968 in saving me from serious [though thankfully short-lived] pain, when travelling immediately behind many a steam locomotive with my head stuck out of the front carriage window. I have already made use of them on the Scarborough Spa Express behind Royal Scot Class No. 46115 Scots Guardsman, over the Settle and Carlisle behind Black Five 45305 and on one or two of the heritage railways as well. In all cases, I have found the enhanced, goggle-eyed, experience most invigorating. This item is definitely not going to be a railway antique for some time to come.