Railway Blog tops 1,500

mikepriestleysrailwayheritage.blogspot.com topped 1,500 visits today and I’m very grateful to everyone who has dipped in. Alternatively, thank you both for your devoted attention but would you mind telling your friends?

Watch this space for a feast of archive photographs of steam, heritage diesels and even the odd sailing ship from the days before cars shone their headlights on sunny days and the house phone was not just relegated to bad news and hard sell, cold calling.

Johnson 1F No. 1708 at Haworth, KWVR in November 1969.

Nostalgic articles about trains, updates on the railwayana auction scene and wrangles over how best to protect our railway heritage will continue to vie for my attention and hopefully yours, too.

Grand National day 50 years ago

I once went to a race meeting. It was at Newmarket and it was many years ago. The reason was that we just happened to be there and the races just happened to be on. It seemed to be the obvious thing to do. My abiding memory is that when the public address system announced the start of the race there were no horses anywhere to be seen from our supposed grandstand viewpoint. Luckily, and critically for some, no doubt [though personally I couldn’t have cared less], the commentary kept everyone up to date with what was happening for the first few unwitnessed furlongs and then the riders gradually came into view over the rise, followed by their horses, and at last we had a race on our hands.

Fifty years ago we made the last of our four, consecutive, annual pilgrimages to Aintree, home of the Grand National. Each time, we came home before the race and watched it through the grainy, snowy screen that was compulsory on all black and white televisions in the 1960s. We were there for the steam specials, which came to Liverpool from all over the country. They unloaded the punters in their thousands on the otherwise relatively underused platforms at Aintree Sefton Arms station, which lay alongside the suburban electric train service to Ormskirk that had carried us there from New Brighton. In those days, that journey also included a short walk between James Street and Liverpool Exchange. Aintree station, as many race goers will know only too well, is a stone’s throw from the course on the other side of Ormskirk Road.

One of the special trains had a round headboard covering the whole of the engine’s smokebox door and was named the “Tote Investor’s Grand National Special.” The Horserace Totalisator Board, better known as the Tote, is a British bookmakers based in Wigan. It was formerly government owned but was sold off to Betfred in 2011.

The crowds of often very animated racegoers suddenly cramming the rather narrow platforms, before snaking their way off to the event, included some very colourful, loud and larger than life characters. One was kitted out as a red Indian chief in full head-dress. I imagine that many on their big day out had not waited for the bars to open at the course. It seems likely that many a crate of bottled ale had been sunk before the special trains had even crossed into Lancashire. 

Below are the lists of what we saw in our four visits, including the short journey out of Liverpool Exchange, recorded in the order in which they were spotted. Most activity was concentrated in a relatively short burst during the late morning. Having parked their stock, the locomotives often retired to Aintree sheds. My notes include one bunked visit we made around 27B and that probably accounts for the inclusion of the Standard Class 9 former WDs that are notable in the 1963 list.  We then made our way back to the station in time for the arrival of the main attractions of the day.

1963

44989, 45077, 75047, 47327, D2852, 42845, 75049, 45104, 42654, 45698 Mars, 90197, 44926, 90416, 90535, 90181, 42871, 44804, 48643, 90306, 44729, 78044, 70031 Byron, 46156 The South Wales Borderer, 45598 Basutoland, 46125 3^rd Carabinier, 45652 Hawke, 45581 Bihar and Orissa, 44964, 45717 Dauntless, 46118 Royal Welch Fusilier, 44768, 45063, 46167 The Hertfordshire Regiment, 45653 Barham, 46150 The Life Guardsman, D331, 90216, 45102.   

1964

41237, 44730, 75033, D4146, D2852, 45682 Trafalgar, 45024, 75060, 41211, 75046, 42445, 47228, 45531 Sir Frederick Harrison, 78023, 45068, 75043, 48135, 92080, 70021 Morning Star, 70047, 70050 Firth of Clyde, D67, 42018, 70018 Flying Dutchman 70051, Firth of Forth, 75015, 45323, 70054 Dornoch Firth, 45171, 45643 Rodney, 45376, 45041, D79, 45522 Prestatyn, D2853, 45411.

1965

42187, 42601, 41211, 75046, 45627 Sierra Leone, 46444, 44778, 48765, 70052 Firth of Tay, D134, 44937.

1966

41211, 42133, 45449, 44842, 44815, 75060, 75046, 75043, 45069, 70031 Byron, 47289, 44837, D319, 70025 Western Star, D1582, 45376, D99, D1837, 45385, 42436, 42587.

I remember those 4 days with particular affection. We went somewhere different that held no attraction at all for the other 364 days of the year. I went around another fairly local shed that I might otherwise have overlooked as being potentially less exciting than the alternatives, largely driven as we were by the prospect of copping “namers.”

For the record, the winners were: in 1963 Ayala, 1964 Team Sprit, 1965 Jay Trump and 1966 Anglo.

[Taken from an article that first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]

Black 5 No. 44778 at Aintree on Grand National Day in 1965

British Rail posters

“We used them as wrapping paper,” was how one railwayana auction house responded, when turning down my request for the inclusion of a British Rail era poster into a forthcoming mainstream live event. I had first been attracted ten years ago to the genre of posters that covered the decades between the demise of the familiar British Railways totem in the mid-1960’s and the privatisation of the network towards the end of the last century.

The double arrow symbol was very much part of the scene as I stuck it out with the diesels once steam had gone. My contact at the auction was quite right, of course. Prices for these double royals have bumped along at the bottom of the original poster market for years, left in the wake of the much loved British Railways pictorial posters that preceded them. They usually changed hands at single figure values on the best known internet auction website. Those that exceeded that amount often included a view of a diesel or electric locomotive as their focal point.

I liked them because they were colourful, cheerful and of their time. More use was made of photographs for illustration than previously and they were aimed very much at the services the railway provided, rather than idyllic representations of the places you could travel to by train. By then, of course, you could not get to a lot of those places by rail anyway, because the links had disappeared during the 1960’s.

I also thought that the time might eventually come for these posters, as those enthusiasts who were younger than me eventually fell for the same nostalgic reminders that I had, and began to investigate the familiar symbols of their youth.

I also had a suspicion that with the increasing use of VDUs on station platforms, new technology might eventually make paper obsolete and, therefore, that even more recent paper examples might be a long term winner as the traditional poster format itself became scarce. I was wrong – for the time being, anyway. Stations still had the means to display both, some in more recently erected protective cases, as well as on the familiar poster boards.

There are signs emerging that the current auction scene is more prepared than it has been to consider modern posters as more saleable items. They have always entertained the work produced for Scotrail and BR Intercity by the highly regarded artist, Brendan Neiland.

When I approached another of the more prominent auction houses about the possible inclusion of a particular modern poster, I was told that they were re-examining their policy towards the genre. Their own response to this reassessment was to include two examples, for the first time as far as I could make out, in a sale which took place towards the end of 2015. Both sold well and justified the move.

My investigations of British Rail posters sold over the two-year period since the beginning of 2014 showed that although these posters have remained largely confined to what might be perceived to be the less prominent auctions, there did seem to be changes afoot. Most auction houses will now countenance their inclusion, but it is a judgement that is still going to be made very much on a poster by poster basis.

Two railwayana auction houses have taken the plunge more readily than others and with some success. They will feel their instinct to give them a try has been vindicated. Not all have sold but most have and a few have reached three figure sums. Results from the trickle of British Rail posters that have been offered for sale on the major stage will determine how many more are accepted in future.

Any preconceptions that a line in the sand was fixed in 1968 as to what constitutes desirable reminders of our heritage might need to be re-visited. Better straighten out that wrapping paper. It may be worth a few bob in the near future. 

[Based on an article that first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]

Railway paintings at railwayana auctions 2011-15

When one of the glossy railway magazines featured an article recently about the knock-down prices of many second hand railway books, I was sufficiently moved to suggest to them that other railway related bits and pieces may end up in a similar situation in years to come. Can we confidently predict that future generations will view the objects of our desire with the same affection as the current cohort of devotees does, and be prepared to splash out on them in quite the same way as we are?

And another thing [I was on a roll, by then], was that it seemed to me that one area that might be better equipped than most to resist the possibility of plummeting prices in the future might be quality art work. The “glossy” in question was at least consistent, if not dismissive, in ignoring my contribution to the discussion.

Top quality steam railway art is still being produced today by those who were there to witness the steam era “live” with all its trappings. As well as frequently being art of a technically high calibre, it is also helping to build up an exceptional visual record of how the railway once was. It is being fashioned by those with a real feel and affection for their subject matter, emanating from their own very personal experiences.

Pictorial memories of the 50s and 60s are in good hands. Many of the artists are household names for steam enthusiasts. They provide us with wonderful reminders of our youth and successfully communicate the atmosphere of it all in a way that should also stand the test of time.

The on-going relationship between original art work and the railwayana scene is also fascinating. Given that the nature of the railwayana auction set-up is itself fairly fluid and that not all records of past auctions are available for retrospective perusal on the internet, there is still enough information out there for some trends to become evident. In addition to those included in the brief summary below, there are many other excellent railway artists, some of whom are affiliated to the Guild of Railway Artists, whose work has not cropped up at all at the main railwayana auctions during the last five years.    

The provisos for my own investigations were: original paintings rather than prints, only railway scenes to be included, no original art work intended for secondary purposes like advertising material, no information from side auctions and postal auctions and no data from auction houses that do not specialise solely in railwayana. Some lots that come to auction remain unsold as shown on the auction houses’ own websites when posted after the events, so, naturally, they are not included in the figures either. Further railway paintings may also, of course, have been sold at other fine art or general auctions during the same time period.

Results from the last two “Sheffield at Derbys,” as well as from Bristol, Solent, Talisman, GCRA, GWRA, Stafford, GNRA, railwayana.net and Crewe were included. The information was from auctions held between 2011 and 2015 inclusive. All the information included was accessible in the auction houses’ own on-line archives.

1. From 2011 to 2015, the number of original railway paintings sold at the main live and internet railwayana auctions increased dramatically:

                 2011 - 32, 2012 - 41, 2013 - 61, 2014 - 88, 2015 - 105.

2. From 2011 to 2015, an increasing number of railway artists had their work auctioned at these sales:

                 2011 - 25, 2012 - 20, 2013 - 27, 2014 - 34, 2015 - 42.

3. From 2011 to 2015, the number of individual specialist railwayana auction events selling paintings markedly increased:

                 2011 – 7, 2012 – 10, 2013 – 13, 2014 – 19, 2015 – 18. 

4. From 2011 to 2015, the number of artists whose work topped the £1,000 hammer price at specialist railwayana auctions increased. The artists concerned were:

                 2011 – 3 paintings by Heiron [2], Broom,

                 2012 – 3 paintings by Bottomley, Hawkins, Broom,

                 2013 – 8 paintings by Broom [2], Breckon [2], Heiron, Root, Price, Freeman,

                 2014 – 7 paintings by Root [3], Elford, Breckon, Freeman, Hawkins,

                 2015 – 11 paintings by Breckon [3], Hawkins [2], Root [2], Beech, Ellis,      

                                                      Elford, Price.

5. From 2011 to 2015, four specialist railwayana auction houses sold paintings for £1,000 or more:

                 GCRA – 21, GWRA – 9, SRA at Derby – 1, GNRA – 1.

One artist, Joe Townend, has been both extraordinarily prolific and particularly successful at notching up sales in the last few years and at a number of different railwayana auction houses. They were mostly oil on canvas, unframed and presented on stretchers.  

That the trend is upwards, there can be no doubt, but what of the next five years and thereafter? Who can pick out the big sellers of the future amongst the more modestly priced paintings coming to auction today? Are there any more potentially big names already out there amongst the post-war train spotters’ generation? Which younger artists will emerge, those who have perhaps developed their skills more recently on the heritage railways? I’m looking forward to seeing if the recent rise in interest will be maintained and finding out who will come to the fore.

[This article first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette, so thanks are due again to the editor Tim Petchey. My photograph of the painting is included with thanks to the artist, Barry Price.] 

Ghost Trains

I hate shopping. My perfect shopping trip, when I have finally been persuaded that I can no longer do without a certain new article of clothing, because I “look so tatty I don’t want to be seen out with you anymore,” is a surgical strike on a major outfitter of no more than ten minutes, followed by half an hour roaming around a bookshop, then lunch out, an hour in a museum or art gallery, then home.

That immediately gets the painful bit out of the way, after which, it falls neatly into the “now it’s just a day out” category. My cunning plan sometimes falls foul of my wife’s ability for lateral thinking. In practice, this means that she may have stated that her aim is to make only one or two purchases herself, but when actually surrounded by all that stuff, she goes off at a tangent and identifies all sorts of household items which were definitely not on the list she showed me - the proof I had required to see before our departure, that we were embarking on a trip of limited duration.

Even worse than the city or town centre shopping expeditions are the out of town retail outlets, where there is nowhere nice to eat lunch and I also find that I have landed in a cultural desert. The latest example we drove into is called Victoria Retail Park and it is in Netherfield, on the edge of Nottingham. I just wished I was somewhere else, or maybe, in this instance, the location was actually OK, but it is just that time has changed it.

While my wife checks out that her latest bit of communications gadgetry is available, I sit on a bench and look after the shopping bag. I close my eyes and whisk myself back some fifty years. Of course, I’ve been here once before. Colwick was one of the very few Eastern Region sheds that I ever reached. The ex-Great Northern Railway motive power depot was on the flood plain of the River Trent and on the outskirts of the city. I comforted myself with that notion, smelling the sulphurous smoke, listening to the clanking from the worn bearings and connecting rods on the ancient, overworked freight engines that were moving around in the extensive yards, where I was now sitting.

I have hazy recollections of ex-LNER locomotives in large numbers, but there were no namers amongst them. That would have upset me at the time, I thought. These were just black and grubby. Many of them were different, however, and lots of them had handrails attached to the boiler cladding, another unusual feature for us LMR folk. I decided that B1s were not as easy on the eye as Black Fives and although the Robinson 2-8-0s were impressive, they looked like a very old design when compared to the Stanier 2-8-0s that we were used to. They certainly all had rarity value, though. I must have copped virtually everything I saw and it would have been a good haul.

I was suddenly jolted back into the present. Quite a well-spoken voice enquired, “Have I got to smack your leg in front of all these people?” Choosing to interpret this firstly as a rhetorical question, and then realising that it was probably more likely that it was being directed at the infant who just happened to be adjacent to me at that moment, I thought it best to maintain my silence. My principles took another hit instead. I could at least have tried to take a bit of the heat out of the situation with a merry, well-timed quip.

I still feel the guilt from the two occasions that I can remember when I smacked my own children, having not just lost patience, but all reason and self-control in the flicker of an eye and as a result of total exasperation and probably over next to nothing, in the overall scheme of things. I remember turning around again from my driving seat seconds later to see the red, raised, finger-shaped marks on the thigh of my slight, delicate and dumbfounded daughter, sitting strapped into the back seat of the car, sandwiched between her, no doubt, equally guilty brother and sister, too shocked even to cry, as a result of my uncharacteristic lapse. The sickening wave of remorse hit me as though I had been jettisoned down a chute into boiling water. It stays with me to this day. I still keep apologising to her for it.  

I had completely lost it at the time, but this parent in the here and now was actually making a calculated, premeditated decision as to a violent intervention and had very publicly brought passers-by into the equation for a bit of added humiliation. It sounded very much like official parental policy, in this case. At least, I could have claimed to have had the intention of not hitting my children. More enlightened attitudes to corporal punishment for young children have apparently not reached parts of Nottinghamshire yet.

Instead, I made every effort to return to my hazy memories of Colwick shed. I’ve been around Colwick shed, I’m sure I have. Why can’t I remember the circumstances and even, roughly, the date? I know it is underlined in my combined volume, as is Toton. It was the only time we ever came anywhere near to Nottingham in the days of steam.

Before any more threats of violence were directed at any other very small people nearby, I persuaded my wife to call it a day. As soon as I got home, I checked. There it is underlined in red in my summer 1962 abc; 40E Colwick, along with 18A Toton. Now, I know I’ve had a wander around Toton during the diesel era - on an open day, I think - so it could just be that I added that one later on, but that would still not explain Colwick. It gets worse. I can’t find any mention of Colwick in my train spotting notebooks [1962-1968]. I’ve gone though them all pretty carefully. I need further assistance.

I contacted the man [then a senior pupil] who ran the railway club at our school and asked him if he took us to Colwick between when I started spotting in 1960 and 1962, years for which I have no written record, choosing instead to recklessly dispose of them, once I’d transferred the information into my combined volume. He got straight back to me. No, we never went there on an organised visit from school.

It is just possible that my train spotting records are incomplete and that one or two trips are missing. In a couple of instances and for reasons unknown, I had also definitely torn out a couple of pages from my notebook. I fancy that on one or two other occasions I did not bother with notes at all, but took a loco-shed book with me in a plastic wallet and lazily recorded straight into that, possibly via scraps of paper, especially, I suppose, if we were going around a busy shed. I would then have done my “neat” version in my combined volume when I got home. That particular arrangement had gone out of the window, the day I left the loco-shed book on my seat when leaving a train in Chester.

Colwick closed to steam in 1966, so it must surely have been before then. Did I ever go long distance spotting by myself or with anyone other than my mates? I had joined the Warwickshire Railway Society for one year only. I liked the look of the shed tours they offered and on Sunday 12^th July 1964, three of us from home had taken part in a mighty bash with them of some Welsh Marches and South Wales sheds. We had made our own way from Liverpool to Birmingham to join the tour. This event had the added incentive that our special train was to be hauled by Castle Class No. 5054 Earl of Ducie and AI Class No. 60114 W.P. Allen, although, unfortunately, the A1 failed at Worcester prior to our homeward journey.

What else did I get for my subscription in a whole year if it wasn’t a trip to Colwick MPD? I contacted my main former train spotting accomplices. “40E Colwick,” I said, “When did we go there? Help me, please,” but nobody could come up with an answer.

I’m thinking now that we might have dropped in at Colwick and Toton on our way back from Grantham youth hostel, where we definitely stayed for the night of the 10^th of April 1969, after the end of steam and a year before 40E, by then re-coded 16B and a diesel depot, was finally closed. I’m not even sure about that. All I can say is that I would never have invented either numbers recorded, or sheds visited. It looks like it will remain a mystery. I actually decided not to list any details of trips we made between the end of steam and 1970 as my protest at steam’s demise - my one-man campaign, which, as you might have noticed, fell on deaf ears and was completely overlooked by the authorities.

So, was I really sitting in the retail park and imagining it all? Perhaps my trip to Colwick had just been wishful thinking. If so, it wasn’t difficult with a little imagination. I could have been there, but maybe I just wasn’t. After all, I knew what some of the engines that lived there looked like from other trips to Gorton, Retford, Doncaster and Darlington.

In fact, all that remains of Colwick shed today is the LMR club in the building that was formerly the staff canteen. Next time you are “encouraged” to go shopping in the big supermarket or the retail park there, try and grab a quiet moment and reminisce about what it was like there half a century ago. It’s easy, apparently. I can only hope that you are brought back down to earth gently. I believe we are all a bit vulnerable when we are emerging from a hypnotic trance. I hope there is no big bully there to spoil the moment. 

[This article first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette. Thanks are due to the editor, Tim Petchey] 

Another brick in the wall

We went to Alston in Cumbria, the southern terminus of the South Tynedale Railway, a narrow gauge line that sits on the formation of the former branch from Haltwhistle, which was opened in 1852 and closed by BR in 1976. It currently runs as far north as Lintley. Such an attractive valley deserves a reinstated, full length, branch line. They are on their way with that, but there is a lot to do before it becomes a reality.

Near Haltwhistle, I reacquainted myself with Hadrian’s Wall. I had first visited it sometime in the late 1960’s when I had rescued a springtime lamb from a snowdrift that had piled up against the wall itself. It would not have been the first such animal to have become inconvenienced in that way, nor will it be the last. It is a bit of a worry that this selfless act sticks in my mind so prominently. I hope it is not because it has had so few similar good turns to keep it company ever since.

The Roman remains on the flood plain and the adjacent upland near Birdoswald, which is off to a fabulous start with its name alone, are quite stunning, and it is even more amazing to read that the whole extent of the wall formerly rose to three or four metres in height. Each remaining stone is dressed, as presumably they must all have been. They didn’t mess about, the Romans. If a wall needed building, it was going to be done properly. No angular “bits and bobs” of dry stone walling for them, just proper oblong stone blocks stuck together with mortar.

At Birdoswald, the Romans built a distinctly impressive bridge across the River Irthing. Although now long gone, it was one of three that were necessary as the barrier marched confidently east-west across the country, on a route roughly parallel to the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway. The railway crossed the wall where we parked our car at Gilsland. Itself no mean feat, the N&CR Company was set up in 1825 and was taken over by the North Eastern Railway in 1862. I note that a certain Thomas Edmondson was a station master on this stretch, at Milton, later renamed Brampton, which turned out to be just the ticket, as he became well-known as the inventor of the ubiquitous Edmondson card ticketing system.

The wall got me thinking about civil engineering structures in general and their part in our railway landscape. Two months before, we had been walking in Yorkshire and spent a day on the fell sides above the village of Dent. From there it was possible to see the Settle and Carlisle line sideways on, and at what looked like a fearsome gradient from that distance, in the approach to Dent station from the south.

Having knocked the mud off our boots and buried them in plastic bags in the back of the car, we drove up to the station. The road sign on the edge of the village claimed it was a mere three miles along the valley then up the hill, and the map showed that the two alternative routes to reach it were roughly equidistant. A good five miles of rather tortuous single track road with a distinct lack of passing places later, I parked the car at the highest main line station in England, at 1,150 feet above sea level. The last time I had set foot here was from a steam special in September 1988 which was hauled by Stanier 2-8-0 No. 48151, that reliable stalwart of the preservation scene. On that occasion, we were treated to a run past at this spot, so that we could take our photographs from the line side.

Dent station, like the others along the line, is now smothered in love and affection, as if it had previously been a neglected or mistreated pet, since rescued and given a new start by the most attentive of owners.

Travelling the Settle and Carlisle, you can marvel at the scenery [on a good day] and admire the efforts of the locomotive [every time]. Most recently for me, this was with Black 5 No. 45305, in July 2011.

What I did not quite appreciate so readily when I was on board the trains were the extraordinary demands that had faced the railway builders and the stupendous and elegant nature of their responses. Everyone knows about the viaduct at Ribblehead, but what about all the other structures that were necessary to keep the gradient within bounds and to cross such an inhospitable landscape, riven with gullies and ravines?

On the way up to the station, my attention was drawn momentarily to the crossings of the Artengill Beck and the minor road at Dent Head, which are visible to the right, soon after the line emerges from the tunnel beneath Blea Moor. It is just one engineering triumph after another throughout its course - a truly magnificent achievement.

[Taken from an article that first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]

I swam in a train shed

My daughter took us to her gym. It is quite a posh affair, compared to the local authority run centre that we usually use, and it appears to attract a lot of young professionals, encouraging those on their way to and from office jobs in the centre of Nottingham to include a daily work-out into their busy routines. It occupies the former train shed of the original Great Northern Railway station.

The grade two listed building dates from 1857, when it opened as London Road station. It was designed by a local architect, Thomas Chambers Hine. It became the terminus of the line built from Grantham in 1850, by the Ambergate, Nottingham, Boston and Eastern Junction Railway, soon after it was extended into Nottingham itself from Netherfield, which is north east of the city. It had seven platforms, which, according to Vic Forster and Bill Taylor in their book, “Railways in and around Nottingham,” turned out to be somewhat optimistic. They went on to point out that although it was the least well used of the city’s three mainline stations, it is the one that has lasted the longest, though that now incorporates a change of function.   

The later provision of an island platform at London Road High Level, situated on a spur from the Grantham line which threaded its way across an already heavily built-up area of the city to join the Great Central Railway at Weekday Cross, meant the original building then became London Road Low Level. The two stations shared a forecourt. The platform for High Level was positioned on two viaducts that were separated by a lattice girder bridge over London Road and an adjacent bridge over the Nottingham Canal. 

P. Howard Anderson, writing in his book, “Forgotten Railways Volume 2: The East Midlands,” described the detailed architecture of the original red brick building with its complex and elaborate frontage and drew attention to the unusual, projecting porte-cochere which was provided to accommodate horse-drawn road carriages, so that passengers could avoid the rain when making their transfer.

High Level survived until the 1960’s but the main Low Level station had previously closed to passengers in 1944. It then operated as a goods depot up to 1972 and for parcels until total closure in around 1989.  Damaged by fire in 1996, it was finally converted to what is now a Virgin Active Health Club, where my daughter and her husband are currently members.

I completed my normal forty lengths and on our way out my daughter informed me that because of the need to work within the limitations set by the framework of the protected building, the swimming pool was actually one metre short of the norm. Consequently, this meant that I had not actually managed my regular, nice round number swim of exactly one kilometre, and that I was, in fact, exactly forty metres short of it.

Only by returning for another couple of minutes, would I have given my body what I consider to be its just desserts for the day. There was no chance of that happening. I had just thought I had been in particularly good form, making excellent time as I sliced impressively through the waves. Actually, this same daughter has pointed out to me on more than one occasion that my swimming style is nothing if not amusing. She then mimicked how I stretch my neck and strain my head upwards as if it were on a stalk, so that I don’t get any water in my mouth, nose or ears, in what just about passes for a weak breast stroke. 

The four broad swimming lanes in the main pool must roughly coincide with platform roads in the old station and as I powered down the straight I could easily have been following the line of a former platform edge. With my head raised, as described, I could clearly see the dagger boards, reconditioned for sure, but still attached to the canopies running the full length of the train shed and also to the arched former entrance for the tracks themselves, ahead of me. Looking from below, the roof itself is an uncovered timber structure, which again appears to be in first class condition, and is clearly, at the very least, in keeping with the overall design as it must have appeared over one hundred and fifty years ago.

Alongside the pool at the station building end is a very chunky and obviously structural cast iron pillar that reminds me of similar, substantial, weight-bearing columns located at the wharf side in the restored Albert Dock complex in Liverpool. Smaller pillars opposite hold up patterned wrought iron work, separating large sheets of glass. A hefty and carefully restored red brick wall runs parallel to the adjacent smaller family pool, in the direction of the main station building.

Well, don’t you think that is just a great way to preserve an old building? It is still there, tastefully developed and carefully looked after. There are clues everywhere you look as to its former use and plaques to help the mystified to make sense of what has been going on there all this time. It is protected for future generations, fulfils a useful role in the modern city and provides work for local people. I hope it all lives happily ever after.

The next time I go for a dip, I promise my body that I will complete 1040 metres, to make up for the restriction forced on me last time by Mr Hine.

[This article first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette. Thanks are due to the editor, Tim Petchey]

I heard the news today

“Aim to know more about the world than you did yesterday,” is the advice that adorns the cover of my current little notebook. I travel everywhere these days with my notepad and pen. It is the obvious thing to do if you have a brain like a sieve but you want to write about stuff. Not a diary but just prompts; things that I have seen, heard or read during the day that amuse me or strike me as pertinent.

Its latest incarnation and my next volume is the “Hornby Trainspotter’s Notebook with Pencil” combo [Made in China] that my daughter and her partner gave me as part of my Christmas present.

Much of what I write down comes from books and newspapers. I love newspapers, though I only buy one once a week. I made exceptions when we are away on family holidays. I remember how reassuring it was to still feel connected with home when on the beach in France by picking up a day old Independent at an exorbitant price that was probably comparable to the total value of the sac de croissants, grande bouteille d’Orangina and slab of Poulain chocolate that I had also bought. I had to go for the Independent, the Times or the Telegraph, because there was no sport to speak of in the continental edition of the Guardian, which was very remiss of them.

In this country, I find there is nothing better than taking the pristine, neatly folded copy of the Guardian down to the beach - so vulnerable to the elements and with the financial section already whisked away by a sudden gust of wind [I’m tempted to let it go, to be honest]. By the end of the day the whole thing looks like a dog has had it. It is short-term gratification - absorbed and expendable, but what a simple pleasure in the meantime.

Looking up from the paper this time last year I noticed another phenomenon – colourful bubble tents just everywhere, suddenly springing into shape and popping up across the beach, the shore looking increasingly like the pimpled surface of a table tennis bat. Between them, multi-coloured windbreaks all over the place, not just singly and one per family, but in multiple, all joined up into stockades against the wind, like Wild West settlers guarding themselves in the face of a hardly surprising attack from a group of unjustly displaced indigenous people.

The way that the media in general reports and writes about life is such an important part of our freedom in a liberal democracy. Long live discussion, debate and access to a plurality of opinions. I always make a point of looking at articles which don’t neatly coincide with my own view of the world. How else could we learn and adapt our own ideas if we close off the possibility that we might have just got it wrong sometimes?

Critical commentary, parody and mickey taking are themselves important parts of our belief systems in a healthy democracy. So, too, is the extraordinary range of hobbies and interests which appeal to the population at large. Just look in the larger town centre book stores at the extent of the magazines section. They stretch way down the aisles in the bigger supermarkets as well. Long may that range of choice continue to provide an insight into the richly varied and idiosyncratic ways that the British people choose to spend their leisure time.

The news on the telly is not immune to a bit of OTT journalism from time to time, when talking about the railways. Apparently, on the day after Boxing Day 2014 when everyone wanted to go back home, this was not going to be that easy via Paddington or King’s Cross, because of OVER-RUNNING ENGINEERING WORKS, which was kind of spat out as though it was the child of Satan. What was headline news on that day was quickly displaced the next morning, when real tragedy unfortunately struck elsewhere.

I know it is a bad thing that people are inconvenienced. I know I wouldn’t have liked it if it had happened to me, but it was not the end of the world. They would all get home. They would all get over it pretty soon. Nobody died. There would certainly be reasons for it and someone obviously messed up, even if the equipment was partly at fault. People will definitely have been blamed and they will no doubt have paid a price for their mistakes. I know that things have changed and that the public rightly won’t stand for incompetence in national bodies any more, but the shrillness of media responses should be commensurate to the scale of the problem. I think we sometimes lose a sense of proportion between hic-cups in our generally smooth and affluent existences and the genuine hardship that still blights so much of the rest of the world. Reporters gave air time to those who had noticed that, “Some people were ill…. others were upset” and even that, “Babies were crying.” And that’s news? All that stuff happens anyway, anywhere and all the time, actually.

Around the same time, one TV news channel surmised that there would be snow on Boxing Day and felt obliged to show us library pictures of a random suburban street with snow on the ground with the caption, “Last Year,” in case we could not imagine what snow might look like after a few months without it, or perhaps just to give us a clue as to what to look out for.

I know. They have to sell their papers. Now that we are to leave the EU and the numbers of immigrants are set to fall, what on earth are some of them going to find to write about? Personally, I’m bracing myself for more OVER-RUNNING ENGINEERING WORKS.

[Updated from an article which first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]

The Keswick Underpants

Going on holiday by train has held a magnetic appeal for me all my life. However, the door to door convenience of the car can’t be denied and on most trips away from home we have come to depend on its added flexibility. More recently, though, we have been letting the train take the strain once again. Manageable sized, long-handled suitcases with very noisy trolley wheels acquired, packed and off we go.

I can’t be the only one who has gone on holiday without checking carefully enough that a specific but essential item of clothing or a vital accessory has not been forgotten. Often it is the attachment for my electric razor that allows me to shave in locations that do not have a specific two pin socket available for that purpose. That can present even more problems when abroad, with opportunities to overlook all sorts of different combinations of the required plugs and attachments.

I have also been on holiday with others who have omitted items on a far more significant scale than I have; for example, to France with no underwear and on another occasion to Scotland with no suitcase at all, which necessitated a complete gentleman’s outfitting in Helensburgh, arguably quite a challenge in itself – especially with no M&S to fall back on.

A suitcase can be a troublesome thing. In America, we watched as others fought with enormous examples, in spite of advice from the holiday organisers not to bring them. This reminded me of a story a friend told me about someone she knew who had been dog sitting when the animal had died. She had put it in a suitcase to take it to the vet. On the upwards escalator from the platform at the tube station, a man offered to help her. “What have you got in here?” he asked, feeling the weight of it. “A hi-fi that I’m taking to my brother,” she replied, at which point he ran off with the suitcase.

I once went to the Lake District without any underpants, or grunds, as we called them in our youth. For all its outlets heaving with specialist clothing and mountain climbing gear, Keswick was decidedly short on grunds when I undertook a full-scale search sometime during the 1990’s. Eventually, I found a pack of three and I still have them. They have a little badge with the maker’s name at the front, so that every time they surface at the top of the pile, bobbing up for another strenuous work-out, I say “Keswick underpants” to anyone who might be listening, which is usually just me.

One of my rare experiences of travel by train right through the night and fully clothed throughout, was at the start of a one week, all-line, rail rover feast that I indulged in, which straddled the end of May and the beginning of June in 1972. Having made my way from Liverpool to London on day one, I then took the 11.45 from Paddington to Penzance, now known as the “Night Riviera,” and not in the sleeping car but “on the cushions.” I had an awful, uncomfortable, fitful night and didn’t sleep a wink.

The Night Riviera sleeping car train prepares to leave St Erth for London Paddington on Friday 12th August 2016 behind Class 57 No. 57605 Totnes Castle. 

My only positive memory of the event was being sufficiently “with it” to enjoy dawn on the South Devon banks, where, through the early morning mist and my banging headache, I noticed that the world had been taken over by bunnies. They were everywhere. I had no idea that before most folk wake up, rabbits apparently rule the land. Perhaps Rabbit Kingdom starts just after Exeter St Thomas, but I somehow doubt it.

I explored British Rail’s Inter-City main line network for the rest of the week and crept home incognito to my own bed each evening. I resolved that next time I tried something like that, I would book a sleeping car berth. I realise that at this point, I am probably already being castigated widely for being a real wimp - lacking in resolve and unfit to describe myself as a true enthusiast and that I wouldn’t last five minutes with the Severn Valley Steam Gala, four days, three nights, twenty-four hours a day, hard-core, steam locomotive, haulage-mile collectors. I have just one thing to say to them. You are quite right. I am probably the rail fan equivalent of the “fair weather” football supporter, who only follows his team when they are winning.

I’m pleased to announce, that in my endeavours to win back some respect [which I know is a tiresomely over-used and consequently under-valued word these days, as it is surely to be earned rather than demanded], I have now enjoyed a further four nights on overnight trains in recent times, though I can hardly claim to have been roughing it. Along with a plentiful supply of grunds and an appropriate range of electric shaver fitments, I have been part of organised ventures to the USA and in mainland Europe, which have included sleepers between the following locations: Washington DC to Chicago, Chicago to Denver, Flagstaff to Los Angeles and at a later date, Cologne to Vienna.

I thoroughly enjoyed them all, revelling in the experience for its own sake, appreciating the magnificent scenery continually unfolding before my eyes and hopefully contributing to the general bonhomie on board - that feeling of togetherness that group travel can so readily engender. In the case of the evening trip up the Rhine Valley in a Czech Railways sleeping car, we were pleasantly surprised to have at our disposal a panoramic view from seats that converted into a double bed, as well as a cabinet full of extras that were, just like the health service, “free at the point of use” [and, just like the NHS, we had already paid for]. These included a bottle of wine which was empty by the time we had reached Bonn.

On that pleasant spring evening, the valley itself could never have looked more splendid, so much so that I kept imagining that I was seeing fairy-tale castles amid the forested peaks on the other side of the Rhine. The other thing that struck me was how well used the rail systems on both sides of the river were for freight trains. It was absolutely buzzing with activity.

        

A fellow traveller during our American visit likened the Amtrak experience to sleeping the night on a shelf in a cupboard. I did feel grateful that I was carrying a little less weight than some of my travelling companions. The requirements were a touch short of Houdini-like. A degree of athleticism and flexibility was a definite advantage for those sleeping aloft.

I generally travel light in summer, relying almost entirely from May to October on shorts and tee shirts, but my preference for casual clothes sometimes catches me out. I was once denied access to a post-wedding party in a club in New Brighton because I was wearing a leather jacket, in spite of the fact that I was waving my invitation card in my hand. Restrictive clothes policies have really grated with me ever since. I suppose that the die was cast on that summer evening long ago. Another couple were turned away from the same event for wearing sandals and someone else for not sporting a tie. He went around the corner, took his belt off, tied it around his neck and was promptly allowed in.     

I have noticed that when another holiday is imminent, it now automatically triggers another trip to the shops for holiday clothes. Shopping is not my favourite pastime, but I had rashly blurted out that I needed some new jeans. As if by decree, they suddenly all come with buttons or studs instead of zips. Why? Zips are obviously superior, easy, quick, robust, sensible and practical. I blame fashion. Fashion has got a lot to answer for.

I did, however, find a pair of shoes for £36. I showed the young sales assistant the dirty mark on one of the laces and asked for a reduction and I was offered a 10% discount. After some rapid interaction with a calculator, her reply was “That will be £20, sir.”

A final piece of advice, while we are still on the subject of clothing; if you are planning to visit Grassington any time soon don’t wear high heels. It’s just a minefield of cobbles. You could easily turn your ankle.

[Adapted from an article that first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette. It is included here with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]

Railwayana locations

“When I were a lad,” I found that a love of trains helped with my geography and geography helped me with my love of trains. I gained a little classroom kudos by knowing where places were [those that had sheds, anyway], and getting around the country a bit at a relatively early age probably even earned me a few test marks from time to time.

It just grew and grew until I was a lifer as far as trains were concerned and a geographer, to boot. One avant-garde branch of my subject in the trendy seventies was that of the so-called phenomenologists. What it really boiled down to was a belief that you could not explain the world solely in scientific or objective terms but you had to also take into account the subjective dimension – how people perceive it.

That was interpreted as an apparent weakness in the subject and contributed to accusations that geography wasn’t seriously studying anything very much and gave other disciplines opportunities to be rather sniffy and dismissive of it as a pseudo-science. Before my own formal studies were complete, I remember becoming quite attached to the notion of “a sense of place,” an idea that was thrown into the mix at around the same time and which hinged on a theme borrowed from psychology that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” In our context, I suppose, it meant that each place is unique and has its own characteristics that give it its own distinctive feel, a concept that would be quite difficult to take issue with in the first place but one which still appeals to me today.

I certainly think it helped me to develop a keen sense of place itself, as well as of relative locations. Our country packs in such a wide variety of landscape types into a comparatively small area. There is a whole lifetime of different holidays to be had in the British Isles alone. I’m undertaking my own fieldwork exercises to try to prove it.

Circumstance eventually parachuted me into a very central area of our own landmass. On the downside, we are a long way from the sea. In the plus column, we are tied up in Notts between the A1 and the M1 and therefore fairly handily situated for travelling in every direction. I am also well placed for attending railwayana auctions and for many of the heritage railways. Although we are seven miles from a railhead, once on the trains we benefit from that centrality again.

An early attraction for us was the wide range of essential services available in our steadily expanding commuter village, with its non-expanding main street. That operates now as a kind of restrictive gastric band that is somehow not quite working in the way it is supposed to. We have not yet required the attention of the mole catcher [“No Mole, No Fee,” as the advertisement in the bus shelter reminds us]. Our own moles are still drawing a blank beneath the stone slabs of the patio. The fortune teller on Main Street works Tuesdays only. Our calamities have tended to fall much later on in the week, so on the occasions that we might have benefited from a quick peek into the future to see if we would be able to put things right, we have just had to stick with the tea leaves, instead.

Given that the auction houses that either dabble in, or commit wholeheartedly to, railwayana are also rather far from the extremities within the UK, I really have no excuse for not having visited them all at least once. Taking the Railway Antiques Gazette’s own list of Diary Dates as a starting point and making the proviso right from the off that any notable omissions are my mistake alone, I found that the following outlet locations have been prominent in more recent times, in addition to the swap meets and collector’s fairs:

Wickham [Solent], Templecombe [Talisman], Dorking [home base for online auction railwayana.net, now aligned with GCRA], London, Bristol, Pershore [GWRA], Stoneleigh and Bloxham [both GCRA], Birmingham, Newark [Talisman again], Stafford, Crewe, Poynton [GNRA] and Thirsk [now showing in the north east after Malton, Scarborough and Kirbymoorside]. Closures [Sheffield], transferred locations [Cotswold], takeovers [GCRA] and recent additions [Poynton], all indicate a fairly dynamic situation overall.

If you take out the sales that are not exclusively railwayana, like Thirsk, and the specialist sales like those in London and Birmingham [tickets], you are left with a swathe of main auctions that are still very much concentrated in northern and central England, from Poynton by way of Crewe, Stafford and Newark to Stoneleigh, Bloxham and Pershore, with a southern extension to Bristol, Templecombe and Wickham. Wales, Scotland and the far south west remain out of the picture altogether.

No doubt this pattern owes much to accidents of history, as was the case for many of our greatest industries, in times gone by. As might be expected, where enthusiasts originally identified a need that they thought that they could meet, they found that there were a surprising number of potential customers prepared to travel some distance to take advantage of the new provision. Most of the large centres of population in the country are quite well served as a result.

I have regularly been to Newark, Pershore and Stoneleigh and in “the old days” many times to Sheffield and Malton. I went recently to Solent for the first time, having heard only nice things about it. Of course, as a geographer, of sorts, I relied on my road map and not on sat’ nav’ to get me there. 

[Adapted from an article that first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]  

Railway heritage at its best

Wherever I go in this country, I come across notable examples of our rich railway heritage that have been saved for future generations by supportive legislation and the hard work of motivated groups and resolute individuals. On a recent Yorkshire holiday, we fitted in a visit to Hellifield station in time to give my daughter’s boyfriend his first experience ever of steam on the main line. I wanted to try to communicate why it is that I find scenes like this one so impressive.

The shell of the old station has been carefully preserved. Its honey-coloured stonework glowed in the low sunlight of a late autumn afternoon. The Duchess of Sutherland glided majestically into the adjacent loop for her water stop, her exertions over the Carlisle to Settle route behind her for the day. Magnificent, I thought. What a great ambassador with which to introduce young people to my own obsession.

She was a regular at Lime Street station in the early 60’s and on Edge Hill shed when we bunked it. She would most likely have been work-worn and grimy then, and as she was a familiar acquaintance we might have hardly given her a second glance. I can’t begin to tell you how pleased I was that she was still here and that my daughter and her boyfriend were here too, to witness our very personal reunification.

Railwayana – rescued, restored, railway relics – Really??

This railwayana lark leaves my wife a little bewildered. A close friend I go to auctions with faces the same issue. It wasn’t a problem when it was just framed posters and a few carriage prints. A portfolio file and archive quality pockets for ease of access and viewing also offered appropriate protection.

They are tucked away most of the time and don’t take up much house room. We both like the double royal posters and recognise them as an appropriate way of recording places that are important to us from our past as well as our present and they are consequently dotted around our home. I wake up to my wife on one side of me and Desmond Barnes’s incarnation of the girl at the end of the pier in New Brighton in the 1950s on the other.

My friend and I both have our respective sanctuaries in our own houses. I call mine an office and my wife calls it a tip but all parties agree that there are fewer restrictions here. There is not much available wall or shelf space left, as you might imagine. “Cluttered” is the most regularly used word to describe it, though I would prefer homely, nostalgic, reminiscent, comforting, reassuring, symbolic, informative, interesting and evocative.

When my friend and I return from auction we receive polite enquiries about what we have successfully bid for or bought from a side-stall. This is undertaken in the interest of protecting any remaining communal and/or office spaces from any further unnecessary “clutter.” Odd snippets of paperwork might just make it without attracting too much attention. Bulky bits of metal, on the other hand, could be a little less welcome.

I have concluded that for me it is partly an age thing. I have become increasingly appreciative of our history and heritage as time has passed. I find there is something reassuring in the sheer dogged permanence of railwayana and its reluctance to be discarded, even though initially, that is exactly why it ended up lying in front of us on those display benches.

Whilst the railway has changed and its designs have been updated, these things that we handle were important to us in times past because they were the accompaniment to our formative years. We have perhaps increasingly valued that period of time ever since. The subsequent care and attention that has eventually been lavished on these artefacts and paperwork indicates a recognition of their lasting value. Buyers often make a substantial personal commitment and dig deep into their resources for the privilege of cherishing them.

My small collection is very personal. It is now part of how I see myself. It reminds me of people, places, times and events. It brings my past back to life. I gain pleasure from such attachments. I love the feeling of belonging that it re-ignites. I want visitors to the house to recognise my close association with railways because I’m proud of my hobby.  

"I remember when this was all houses"

An explanation is required. My dad was born on the Wirral in 1908. “I remember when this was all fields” was how he frequently described the westward march of the Merseyside conurbation across the formerly rural parts of the peninsula he recalled from his childhood.

On a walk out of our own Nottinghamshire village this week to a vantage point that overlooks the steadily expanding settlement, I noticed that the trees planted for the Millennium celebrations have grown so tall that only one or two rooftops and the top of the church spire are now still visible - hence the title. Man-made landscapes change through time, including this intentional return to woodland.

Each time I go back to the Lakes or the Cornish coast, I am reassured and delighted to find them more or less as I last left them. The beauty of the largely natural landscapes, imprinted on me in my early years, has been regularly reinforced thereafter.

Not so, however, many of our man-made environments, including my own special area of interest, the railway landscape, which continues to evolve. In response to a recent announcement on a regional TV programme that our local line was going to be blessed with substantial investment, I had a sudden if somewhat belated urge to record scenes that might also be about to disappear forever. I thought I had better get there before they keep their promise to spend money on it. The penny had dropped that “invest in” means that visible changes are afoot, in just the same way that “close down” does.

Network Rail had announced their intentions, as posted on their website, to make improvements to the level crossings on what is now referred to as the Castle Line between Nottingham and Newark, involving the removal of the signal boxes and gate boxes and the upgrading of the barriers to “obstacle detection crossings with full barriers.” Once completed, all the signalling on the line will be controlled from the East Midlands Control Centre in Derby.

I’m pleased that there is to be investment in our local line. I know this involves the dismantling of structures that have become familiar landmarks and I feel sad about their disappearance, but there is, as in all things, a balance to be struck. We have an amazing proliferation of heritage railways which just keeps on growing, accumulating the artefacts from previous eras and using or displaying them appropriately.

We also have an army of determined photographers, historians, writers and modellers to remind us of the attractions of man-made landscapes which have been lost during the march of progress. Whilst we shall, no doubt, continue to be vigilant in our efforts to preserve as much as possible of value from our rich heritage, we should also take pride in the continued success of the railways themselves, which undeniably require, from time to time, everything from a little tinkering, through unrecognisable redevelopment, to the creation of whole new systems.

[Adapted from an article that first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]