Return to Selby

Fifty-four years and eighteen days after I stepped down from the all green Trans-Pennine unit from Liverpool to Hull and set foot on Selby station for the first time, I was back on the same platform.

I had just turned 14 years of age and I was on my tod when I made that journey, in a quest to add to my tally of ex-LNER Pacifics and to get one over on my train spotting mates, in a competition that they were not necessarily aware of. I disembarked into freezing fog, which hung on relentlessly all day. 1963, you may remember, was a very bad winter and there were remnants of previous coverings of snow on the ground and more than that in the hills, on the way across.

I did not leave the platform that I had arrived on until it was time to go home again. I had probably thrown in the towel by mid-afternoon. I spent the whole time I was there hopping in and out of the station buffet and treating myself to mugs of hot tea and sausage rolls, my picnic lunch having been devoured, as was usually the case on such occasions, by 11 a.m. at the latest.

Until yesterday, I did not have much of a clue as to what the town itself had to offer, including the impressive 11^th century abbey, some fine old buildings in the central area and the waterside mills. I did not even know what the station façade looked like.

The through tracks between the platform loops are now just an open space. The well-known swing bridge over the Rive Ouse, with its control house perched on the top, is still there, though I could well have missed it completely through poor visibility in February 1963.

The East Coast Main Line has been diverted away from the town altogether in the interim, though there is still a regular train service to a range of predominantly northern destinations advertised on the VDU. The station café is still going strong and appears to be well used.

In my mind’s eye, I could still see Miles Beevor and Edward Thompson, Book Law and King’s Courier bursting out of the mist with their London expresses. Interspersed with them were the Deltics, no doubt the villains of the piece on the day, though appreciated since in their own right.

I stood and thought about all the water that had gone under the bridge since I was last there. The gradual accumulation of qualifications, a whole career that has come and gone, all that energetic scampering around on playing fields and in sports halls, the arrival of children and grandchildren and all those “sliding door” moments where critical choices had to be made. It suddenly felt like it had been no time at all.