Runcorn Bridge

The only surviving photographs in my grandfather’s collection that featured the nineteenth century railway - apart from the Conwy examples - were these shots of the Runcorn Bridge. Arthur Priestley recorded the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, whilst travelling the length of the new waterway from Eastham to Salford.

The Runcorn railway bridge, connecting Widnes and Runcorn on the main line from Liverpool to London Euston, is a grade two listed building. It was built by the London and North Western Railway and opened in 1868. The bridge crosses both the River Mersey and the ship canal.

Arthur had to take two pictures to fit it all in, both of which I included in Merseyside in Monochrome, on the page shown below. The second image shows a southbound train about to cross from Lancashire into Cheshire.

Mersey Docks and Harbour Board Railway

A recent contribution to the letters page of Heritage Railway magazine attracted my attention. It was written by John Dyer and accompanied by two of his photographs of 0-4-0 saddle tanks with freight trains at Birkenhead docks.

John was a few years older than us and was a leading light in our school’s railway society, and therefore partly responsible for encouraging our interest in railways. In more recent times he has kindly granted me access to his photograph collection.

Though I remember the MD&HB system and saw it operating, I did not have the foresight to take any pictures of it. That would have been partly because they had their own numbering system, rather than BR numbers, so they would not have been included in our abc of British Locomotives that we referred to as the Combined Volume. It was so-called because it covered the same ground as a series of smaller pocket books published by Ian Allan for the individual regions of BR, but all within one binder.

[Photo with thanks to John Dyer]

The Photographers’ Day Out

This batch of pictures of Conwy was taken before 1896 by my grandfather, Arthur Priestley, and was included in my book, The Priestley Collection. The scans do not do justice to the original prints, unfortunately. These photographs show the railway at the point where it crosses the river and passes through the ramparts of the castle, just as it does today, of course.

Conwy Castle, one of a series of fortifications built by King Edward I to contain the Welsh, was built between 1283 and 1289. One image shows Thomas Telford’s early suspension bridge of 1826 in front of the tubular railway bridge, completed in 1848 by Robert Stephenson. 

Arthur walked out of Conwy to the south and took a group of four pictures of the castle from the hillside opposite, looking back towards the town and the railway. The Chester and Holyhead Railway had been taken over by the London North Western Railway in 1859. There are examples of goods trucks and passenger rolling stock visible in the sidings adjacent to the main line.

The presence of other photographers and their tripods suggests that this was a photographers’ group outing.

  

My Pal Baggy Pants lets the train take the strain [from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog]

In September 2009, we took the most famous of all the Little Trains of Wales, from the former slate quarries of Snowdonia down to the coast on Cardigan Bay. Originally, the trains carrying slate for export through the port were gravity operated down to Porthmadog. Horses then hauled the empties back inland.

I had obviously thought long and hard about my garb for the day before settling on baggy pants. My Pal Baggy Pants was a comic strip character in the Dandy. I think it would be considered very un-PC today, but it would hardly be alone. It was of its time.

Rescued by Alan Pegler in 1951, the Ffestiniog Railway has since become a major tourist attraction. The Welsh Highland Railway, owned by the same company and operating trains to Caernarfon, has reconnected with the FR to create a steam railway hub on the quayside at Porthmadog.

My baggy walking trousers are still available to me in my wardrobe should the occasion demand it. 

My sort of car park

Talisman Railwayana’s 24th March 2018 auction had a pre-1971, London Transport automatic car park sign, “Two shillings a day, enter free, pay as you drive out.”

Enter free? That wasn’t free. That was paying on the way out. There was nothing free about it. It was payment taken when you left - like purchasing goods in a shop, after a meal in a restaurant or even winning an unfathomable sign at an auction. Some things worked the other way around, so we may have paid for a swim before we jumped in the pool or before we sat in our seats at the cinema, but no-one ever said pay when you come in and it is free for you to leave afterwards, because that would be nonsense.

I suppose you could have wandered around town for a couple of hours thinking, “Great, this car park isn’t costing me anything as long as I don’t go back there to get my car out. How cool is this? I’m beating the system. Perhaps I should just stay here longer, as its still free, and carry on walking around town some more. In fact, I think I might just leave my car there for ever, as I don’t have to pay as long as it’s still in there.”

  

The Cotton Mill Express

It was nearly ten years ago, in May 2008, that we set off to find out if there really were 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. It was suggested that John Lennon’s famous reference to the town was taken from a newspaper report about pot holes.

It reminded me that we had seen some other original Beatles lyrics when we last called in at the British Library. My London tip would be that if you ever have an hour or two to spare when waiting to depart the capital from any of the stations along the Euston Road, this library is an absolute gem - cultural history galore.

Blackburn’s pavements, at least, seemed to be in adequate condition. We dined at Wetherspoons before re-joining the train for the long and winding route home.

Celebrity Status

I am increasingly out of touch with popular culture. I don’t recognise many of the celebrities paraded as such on TV. I have to ask Chris who they are and why they are famous and often she does not have a clue, either. It strikes me that perhaps some of them are famous for being, well, famous and not a great deal else.  

When I have occasionally met celebrities, I hope that I have not been reduced to polishing any already enlarged egos, unlike the inhabitants of early nineteenth century Ramsgate, where the harbour-side inscription reads, “To George IV, the King Of Great Britain and Ireland, the inhabitants and visitors of Ramsgate and the directors and trustees of the harbour have erected this obelisk as a grateful reminder of His Majesty’s gracious condescension in selecting this port for his embarkation of the 25^th September in progress to his Kingdom of Hannover and His happy Return on the 8 November 1821.” Talk about an over the top response; he only passed through, got on a boat and came back. 

Amongst my own more recent celebrities are those who have painted pictures of the railway in action or the places that the railway could take you. Railway posters were designed to be viewed by people who were in a hurry. They were to be glanced at in passing, maybe from across a platform or even when the train was moving through the station. They create an impression in the flicker of an eye, which the best examples manage by having a well defined and uncluttered image. This is why the art deco examples, typified by bold lines and strong splashes of colour, are so effective.

I do a bit of bird watching, a hobby with some similarities to trains, though some of their leading lights have spoken out in the past in less than complimentary tones about “tickers” or “twitchers.”

Celebrity birds are ones that the bird watchers are not expecting. They are often lost vagrants who have condemned themselves to a life away from their mates as a result of faulty on-board navigation systems. You can generally find them pretty easily once their presence has been announced by spotting the bird watchers themselves, who will usually be present in some numbers.

The watchers have their own distinct characteristics - camouflage clothing, expensive optical equipment and high tech’ communications gadgetry. Bird guide books are not considered to be best practice out in the field. It’s not cool to admit that you need one of those, so I keep mine hidden until I get back in the car.

As with trains, they are a knowledgeable lot with their own big-name stars - both bird species and their human luminaries. Celebrity bird stories might include the return of red kites, avocets and sea eagles. Like railways, they have allowed certain species to become extinct - or, more likely, to lose their hold in former domains. Rebuild projects in the bird world re-create habitats that have been lost to “progress,” in the hope that specific “missing” bird species will then come back.

[Based on an article published during 2017 in the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]

Cunard

There were ocean liners on the Mersey when I was a lad. Amongst the most notable was the trans-Atlantic Cunard fleet. Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary were too big for Liverpool, or so we were told, but we had the Sylvania and Carinthia, from memory, and there were probably others, too.

I heard it said that the captain of the Mauretania lived in our road in the late 1950s, though I never noticed him wandering past our house in a naval uniform. Mauretania sailed mostly from Southampton, it seems, so maybe that was all a bit fanciful. The whole company ended up on the Solent, eventually, of course - boats, HQ, captains and all.

This is my latest poster acquisition. Original, double royal ship posters have their own following, just like the railway examples. Photographic illustrations like this one generally command lower sale prices than paintings. Nevertheless, this is a nice reminder of the big ships in the river, a shot taken a long time before the Liver Building received a facial scrub to remove its early twentieth century grime.

Today, it’s the cruise ships that have taken the long-gone liners’ place at the waterfront, providing extra customers for Liverpool’s thriving and largely heritage-based tourism industry.

Out of the blue

About this time last year, I put on my shorts and trainers and drove towards the gym. As I travelled through the first village from home, I asked myself the question, “Why are you going to the gym on the most pleasant day of the year, so far?” Snowdrops and crocuses were out and the daffodils were on their way. It was dry and sunny and though there was still a slight chill in the air, I would soon warm up on my bike, even in just a sweater. I turned the car round and started my daily exercise regime again, this time on two wheels.

Then I remembered that the main road was closed for repairs – almost certainly to fill in some of the pot holes, which have become an ever-present feature of the landscape around here in recent times. So that would be why this country lane is so much busier than normal, I muttered to myself.

Further progress was halted by two cars stopped adjacent to each other in the road. They were facing different directions and their drivers were engaged in earnest conversation. Surely not road rage here, I thought, looking to see if I could squeeze round on either side to make my get-away from the scene before I became embroiled as a witness to any possible assault. I always look on the bright side at times like this. There was no way past. The young man with his girlfriend in the smaller car that was facing me was behaving very reasonably. He had not raised his voice, but the older man, who was on his own, with his Volvo Estate sprawling across most of the road and who had clearly, from his current position, made no real effort to move over in the first place to enable the two of them to pass each other, was clearly trying to put him on the spot. “I drive it every day,” I heard the young man reply, defensively and as indignantly as he could without sounding unnecessarily provocative. After we had all been sitting there for a further couple of minutes, including me on my saddle, the girl friend noticed me waiting and the young man suddenly reversed a few yards rather jerkily and I was allowed to escape. I left them to it. There was no sign of them when I returned that way some twenty minutes later. I looked down for noticeable patches of blood on the road but there were none.

I regained the trail, the old railway line that provides me with such a convenient traffic-free outlet from home. I sailed down the access road to the car park next to the old station house. A family group walked towards me; father, mother and grown-up son, at a guess. They had clearly just left their car and were all zipping up their jackets in unison, as they turned into the, by now, cooler breeze. All were looking down at their feet and it struck me that none of them saw me passing them, apart from their dog, as I free-wheeled along in the opposite direction.

Within seconds I heard the father shout, “Haaart goooin on’t baark?” I braked and turned to face him, as his voice had reached me easily over the intervening twenty yards or so and I had sensed that he had already turned around just after I had passed him. Interpreting this as, “Are you going on your bike?” or even, “It is hard going on your bike,” I did not have a chance to respond before he had spun back round to the rest of the family, adding, “Suuh quiet, yuuh carn-ardly ’ear um.” I thought it best not to stop and begin a conversation about looking where you are going and decided retrospectively, that a little tinkle on my bell had probably been called for. I offered him a belated wave and a smile but neither was reciprocated and I proceeded homewards.

I’ve noticed that most cyclists on the trail now either give a little “ping” on their bell to walkers approached from behind, or else they make a comment to let them know they are there, like “Coming past,” or “On your right,” or just, “Good morning,” and uttered sufficiently early to act as a polite warning of the intention to pass when out of the normal line of sight, all of which makes good sense to me and with which I would also usually comply. My failure on this occasion was not to notice in time that all three of the people walking towards me had failed to register my existence at all.

I made it safely home with no further trauma and sat out of the wind in my garden for half an hour to enjoy a bit of low-level vitamin D. I took outside with me the copy of “The Railway Paintings of Don Breckon,” which my wife had given me for my birthday and then I turned back time. From the detailed introduction by Roger Malone, I got an immediate understanding of how thoroughly Don Breckon studied his subject matter prior to lifting up his brushes, with many field study sketches, not just of bridges, stations and trains but of figures in different poses, tractors, seagulls and trees. In other words, it was an indication of the attention he paid to the whole scene and not just the locomotives.

It is well known that Don Breckon’s work is highly rated in the railway fraternity. The prices reached by his paintings are as high as for anyone. They are very sought after. He gets it right from a railway point of view, in the sense that the locomotives are accurately represented from a technical perspective, but there is much more to it than that.

He also manages to create a convincing ambience with detailed settings and the appropriate inclusion of people, not just as add-ons or background figures but animated players who are part of the composition. It is the inter-action between the scene and its inhabitants that is one of the most endearing features of much of his work. It might be a claim too far to say that they tell a story, but they offer the on-looker an opportunity to step into another world and then make up their own tale. Nostalgia it certainly is - but based on such closely observed detail and a clear empathy for those so deliberately chosen to start the story off.

It conjures up a lost world without road rage and disharmony, where neighbourliness triumphed and where folk had time to stop and chat when they met on a country lane, rather than argue over right of way or make negative asides about fellow wanderers. Sadly, Don Breckon died in 2013. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for some time. His work lives on as a reminder of an age that we like to think of as being a bit different in its values - but maybe even that is a bit of wishful thinking, too.

[Based on an article written initially for the Railway Antiques Gazette] 

Tug Boats

John Christiansen’s painting, “Inward Bound – River Mersey circa 1964,” provides great memories for me of the shipping activity on the river, especially around the entrances to the various docks and the approach to the landing stage.

Whether it was ship spotting on the Liverpool side by bike on a Saturday morning or watching the action from Egremont Promenade, the tug boats were an ever-present and integral part of the scene. Busy and manoeuvrable, they fussed around until they had positioned the ocean-going vessels accurately enough to enable them to make their next move. It was magic to watch them at work.

The Empress of Britain was one of three Canadian Pacific liners in her class and I’m sure I must have seen them all at one time or another. From the Overhead Railway, I can remember a grandstand view of the burnt-out hulk of her sister ship, the Empress of Canada, in Liverpool’s Gladstone Dock. That was the only time I ever travelled on the LOR. I have always been grateful to my Dad for taking me there.

John Christiansen comes from a seafaring family and his father worked on the tug boats for thirty-four years. His paintings at www.tugboatsinwatercolour.com concentrate on those relatively unsung workhorses of the estuary. He’s making a great job of reminding us of their pivotal role and I’m very pleased to have added this fine example to my own collection.

Culture Club

When Leander drowned in a storm whilst swimming across the Dardanelles on his way to meet his lover, Hero, it was obviously not a great night to be out of the house. Jubilee Class No 45690 Leander it was, then, that lead us up into the hills, double-heading with Black Five No. 45407, through intermittently blizzard conditions on Saturday’s High Peak Explorer. Nothing, if not intrepid, that Leander.

With over four hours to kill at Buxton in sub-zero conditions, we were drawn to continue our cultural theme by the banner advertising a coffee morning at the Opera House, built by the renowned opera house architect, Frank Matcham, in 1903.

Half way through our Bakewell tarts we were offered a guided tour by one of the coffee morning volunteers. In the ladies’ loo there is a dumbwaiter, by which means the ladies - who were not allowed to join their husbands at the men only bar - acquired their drinks. The thought of all those women, dressed to the nines and intent on a good night out, in reality being corralled into the ladies’ loo during the intermission, with only some fine copper-work piping and a series of substantial circular wooden seats to admire, is quite something.

We braved the next flurry of snow to take lunch at the Pavilion Gardens next door. Entering through a magnificent conservatory, containing an equally impressive floral display and to the accompaniment of a french horn soloist, we made our way up to the first-floor Art Café, which was running true to form with a display of the work of local artists adorning the walls.

Designed by Sir Joseph Paxton and opened in 1871, it was the arrival of the railway to Buxton during the previous decade that had encouraged further development of the spa town. We spent the following three hours there over lunch as the weather raged outside, occasionally clearing for short-lived bursts of sunshine.

When Leander and his partner for the day arrived back at the station to continue our exploration of the freight-only lines that surround the town, we were back to near blizzard conditions. I sheltered under the canopy while the lads fought the elements to get their snow-flecked photographs. It suddenly dawned on me that I was next to the ladies’ loo again. I decided that I should probably drop that habit with immediate effect.

It was a good job that we had the fearless Leander and the ever-dependable Black Five at the fore to get us through the worst that the “mini-beast from the east” could muster. So, what’s next for the culture club? Well, a brief incursion through the ramparts of Conwy Castle into Owain Glyndwr territory on the North Wales Coast Express is a possibility, or maybe a literary diversion on the Shakespeare Express to Stratford? – both weather permitting, of course. 

 

I like to ride my bicycle [sometimes]

It’s official. Cycling is good for us oldies. Last week, the BBC reported that tests have shown that cycling boosts your immune system when you get older. Hardly surprising, I guess. Hopefully other forms of exercise also help, but good news nevertheless.

I must admit to being a fair-weather cyclist – actually, make that a warm day, no precipitation of any kind and virtually no wind, sort of cyclist. Even then, it’s usually just down to the main street in the village, which is barely five minutes away even on foot.

I do feel a bit hemmed in by some very busy main roads around here, though I know that sounds like I’m already making excuses. However, my cycling friends on the Wirral have two very distinct advantages. The first is a coastal, largely traffic-free cycle-way that very nearly circumnavigates the peninsula, thanks in part to the Wirral Way, the former track bed of the West Kirby to Hooton railway line.

Secondly, the Merseyside Passenger Travel Executive provides free rail travel for seniors and their bikes, allowing easier access to North Wales, rural Cheshire and even the flat bits behind Liverpool. I’m sure they know how lucky they are.

Anyway, I’m off to the gym now, which is all of four miles away. Not very green but I think I’ll take the car.

Visually Challenging

My daughter asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I’d already made my Father Christmas list, as usual. “Exploring Britain’s Lost Railways,” I replied. Written by Julian Holland and published by Collins, it gets around fifty former railway lines and tells us what’s going on there today in 300 pages, including lots of “then and now” photographs.

The book is OK, and although the formula gets a bit repetitive, that’s not my main problem with it. The print is tiny. My eyes are not brilliant and I have to wear glasses for reading and much else. This book just stuck the boot in. My bedside table lamp is not helping that much, so perhaps I’m in the market for something more specialist - but wait, actually, this book is the only one that I am struggling with, so maybe it’s the publication that’s got it wrong.

It is, after all, the sort of book that might appeal to people of a certain age in the first place [though not exclusively, admittedly] but why did they have to make it such an ordeal? I skim read the second half in protest. That’ll show them.

A Big Bap

Where are you on personalised number plates? Are they just for people with more cash than imagination who don’t know what to spend it on except showing off?

I don’t want one myself, but I have to admit to noticing them. Some members of the railway fraternity are certainly up for them. Railwayana auction car parks often contain a sprinkling of LMS, GCR and GWR reminders. I’ve also had my head turned by an EFC, or two, in my time. 

What makes me smile most, is when the carefully re-arranged digits are clearly meant to stand for something that is very significant for the driver, but which is completely baffling to everyone else.

At the traffic lights on the way into town recently, a van pulled up alongside us advertising Catherine’s Cakes, a Nottingham-based confectionery company. The plate was AB 16 BAP, which, of course, had been re-arranged to read A B16 BAP.

Number Forty

[Marking the inclusion of my fortieth published article in the Railway Antiques Gazette, for which I am grateful to the editor, Tim Petchey.]

Amongst named locomotives ending in 40, I have discovered that Hall Class No. 4940 Ludford Hall is missing from my abc of British Locomotives, summer 1962 edition. This is because she was withdrawn in 1959, and as I only started spotting in 1960, I never saw her. I had better luck with Castle Class No. 5040 Stokesay Castle. I also saw Hall Class No. 5940 Whitbourne Hall and Modified Hall Class No. 6940 Didlington Hall, but I missed out on Grange Class No. 6840 Hazeley Grange. 

When I was forty, I decided that whenever I went to the swimming pool thereafter, I would swim one length for each year of my life so far. It so happens, that one length of a normal sized swimming pool is 25 metres and so 40 times that is one kilometre. One kilometre is also the breadth of the River Mersey at the narrowest part of the lower estuary, known as The Narrows, so every time I go swimming I am spurred on by the fact that after 20 lengths I’m over half way across the river, the Liverpool bank is getting closer and I have still not been mown down by a super tanker.

I did not get to the Southern Region until late on and I had some catching up to do. King Arthur Class 30740 Merlin had been written off, having been deliberately crashed as part of the making of a film at the Longmoor Military Railway, in 1955. The Schools Class only went up to No. 30939, but I remember clearly taking this photograph of West Country Class No. 34040 Crewkerne at Oxford during a cycling and youth hostelling adventure with seven friends in 1965. She was waiting to take over a train for the south.

I have continued my fitness connection by attending the gym for 40 minutes only for each visit, a pattern that I have followed for decades. I have persuaded myself that it is a boring but necessary part of my regime and that forty minutes is the minimum I can get away with. This means that with 10 minutes travelling time each way, every trip adds up to one hour out of my day, which is hardly excessive but all I’m prepared to invest. I hope it is enough. I have also noticed that two of the little pills I have to take daily are at doses of 40 mg.

I saw rebuilt Patriot Class No. 45540 Sir Robert Turnbull and the two Jubilees, Nos. 45640 Frobisher and 45740 Munster, which we referred to as a stink, because we saw her pass by so frequently in Chester, when she was a Crewe and Llandudno engine. I also underlined Royal Scot Class No. 46140 The King’s Royal Rifle Corps and Coronation Class No. 46240 City of Coventry.

I have only once been in temperatures of over 40 degrees and that was in Northern Spain, the so-called Green Spain, between the mountain range the Picos de Europa and the Bay of Biscay. We chose this area for our summer holidays in 2012 because it is renowned for having a more temperate climate than areas inland and further south. I don’t do hot that well, though I must say that dry hot is much more bearable than the sticky hot we found in Washington DC in August 2009, where temperatures were only in the low 30’s.

My Eastern Region visits were relatively rare events, but I managed to see both A3 Class 60040 Cameronian and A1 Class 60140 Balmoral. The A2s, again, stopped at 60539. V2s ending in 40 were not named and although I never caught up with B1 Class No. 61040 Roedeer, I did see 61240 Harry Hinchcliffe.

Though I am less well travelled than many of my friends, I see now that I have not only crossed the United States by more or less following the line of latitude at 40 degrees north, but I have spent time in Europe close to the same line when in Madrid and Majorca, as well as at longitude 40 east, when visiting our son in Tanzania at Dar-Es-Salaam and Zanzibar.  

Britannia Class No. 70040 Clive of India started out on the Eastern Region and I thought early on that I would never get to see her. Eventually she was sent to Carlisle Kingmoor, where I remember her looking very forlorn, withdrawn from service and in the company of about half of the class waiting for the chop.

From the outset of every football season Everton need 40 points in the Premiership to be safe from relegation. It is the primary bench mark for a whole host of other top-flight outfits as well. Survival is paramount, both financially and for the club’s reputation. Everton have spent more time than any other club in the top division of English football, making it even more imperative that we hang on to our status. We may not have the big backers who have descended on some clubs, but we are exceedingly proud of our heritage. 40 years before I wrote this piece, Derby were champions, Everton were fourth and Chelsea were relegated. As always, and with the undying optimism that characterises the football fan, we continue to live in hope that next season will be the one.

Quorn Swapmeet

The photo shows my “stall” at Quorn Swapmeet on the Great Central Railway yesterday, my third visit there over the last couple of years. I thought originally that I might shift some books [Ha!] but now I’m trying to thin out my print and poster collection as the focal point of my interest has changed.

This is a long-established and popular event in the railwayana catalogue – effectively a car boot [or table top] sale for fans of railway memorabilia. It is held three times a year, in the car park and former goods yard at Quorn and Woodhouse station.

An early start is required to assure a less peripheral spot, as the gates open at 7.30 am and it is an hour’s drive to get there, in my case. As I have discovered, however, the early bird is not automatically assured of any worms.

As I have various pieces of paper on show, I depend on it being a dry day. If its windy, it can also be a bit tricky, in fact I’m all over the place - and so is the paper.

To Hull and back

I’ve been to Hull twice in recent times. On both occasions we have visited the Deep, a splendid aquarium. It was wet outside the Deep, as well. It was also cold and windy on both occasions, though I’m sure Hull has its days. Roads, shops, cafes and pavements all seemed surprisingly quiet for a working weekday in a city centre, and with the 2017 city of culture celebrations now having fizzled out, there was rather a feeling of “What next, then?” about the place.

We found a lovely painting in the Ferens art gallery, however - The First Born by Frederick William Elwell, and this was probably the highlight of the visit, along with the sharks and the manta rays.

The concourse at Hull Paragon station has this very dramatic and effective statue to remember Philip Larkin, a favourite son. The Whitsun Weddings is the best known of his few railway themed poems.

A bit sniffy

My daughter gave me a book for Christmas. Simon Garfield was already known to both of us as the author of On the Map, a splendid and well written explanation of the importance of maps over the centuries, which had formed a previous present from her, in the belief that, as an erstwhile geographer, I would find it of interest, which I duly did.

The Last Journey of William Huskisson [Faber and Faber Limited, 2003] is also informative and very readable, no section more so than the description of the meeting between twenty-one-year old Fanny Kemble, an actress with good connections and George Stephenson, himself, who accompanied her on her first ride behind the Rocket as part of a demonstration run prior to the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830. It is a delightful story and well told.

Later in the book, Simon Garfield gets quite hooked on L&MR memorabilia, especially original paperwork, and so, quite logically, he finds himself attending railwayana fairs and auctions for the first time. This is how he describes what he discovered there.

“Whenever I went to these things I found I had to battle my way past an eager crowd of pensionable men with uncommon hair partings and the whiff of heartbreak about them, as if they had been spending too long in airless rooms with their timetable collections and had begun to question whether they had been wasting their weekends. Their aim was completion, but their task was impossible: there was just too much railway stuff out there. They were a knowledgeable bunch and the thing they knew most about was each other.” [p.206]

By this last point he meant that many stall holders and customers knew each other well as providers and consumers, respectively, of some very specific items in which they shared a mutual interest. I take his point about the volume of stuff out there and perhaps it is that fact particularly, second only to the availability of disposable income, which drives specialisation and personal choices within the field.

I nevertheless bristled a bit when I read about myself in these terms and then I had a bit of a think about it. I remember once being seated at Stoneleigh in winter and suddenly thinking that there was not much air in the room. In summer, those big side entrances are sometimes opened for a welcome breeze. I have luckily not suffered much from respiratory problems, to date, but I was definitely conscious that there was perhaps not quite enough fresh air to go around everyone. I surmised that by mid-afternoon a sharp intake of breath might already be second or third hand. I went to stretch my legs.

I don’t feel desperately inclined to re-visit for long the old chestnut of whether we are wasting our time or not. I’m inclined to give us the benefit of any doubt on the basis of valuing heritage and a sense of history, which Simon Garfield himself also obviously shares. The whole collecting business is very widespread and certainly not confined to railway stuff anyway. I would have to hold up my hands in agreement about the pensionable age thing. To my knowledge, there will be no more palatable escape for any of us from that one.

My wife and I took a train from Kidderminster - it must be a few years ago now and during one of the Severn Valley Railway’s brilliant gala weekends. I chose an elderly ex-LMS mixed first and third-class compartment coach because it was close to the engine, the chunky ex-GWR 2-8-0 tank No. 4270, that was visiting from the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway.

“This compartment stinks,” my wife observed as we entered the third-class option. She turned tail straight away and headed for the adjacent first-class alternative, which she would have been happy with had we been eligible. Before you could say “aerosol air freshener,” she was on her mobile phone to our friend, John, who works as a volunteer in the carriage department at the SVR. “Haven’t you got any shampoo for your upholstery?” was her opening gambit, holding him personally responsible for our short-lived discomfort.

It seems that John is never happier these days than when fully equipped with paint brushes and varnish, and he has recently been rewarded for having a steady hand by promotion to lining out duties on the immaculately refurbished stock. Back in third class, though a little further down the train, Chris opened the window for some ventilation. I opened it a bit further so I could hear the beat of the locomotive. Then I settled down and kept my fingers crossed for a relaxing journey to Bridgnorth. Momentarily, I caught sight of my reflection in the carriage window and remembered the days when I had sufficient hair for an uncommon parting.

 

Along the route, I pondered over whether I, too, had a whiff of heartbreak about me. We are still together after all this time, of course, and who else would be so protective of the sensitivity of my olfactory organ in such situations? That reminded me that I needed to remove the rotting leaves from the drain next to the kitchen door when I got home.

[This article appears in the current edition of the Railway Antiques Gazette, for which I am grateful to the editor, Tim Petchey.]

“I thought all hedgehogs were flat.”

I was just wondering if the Detectorists sitcom was really all that funny, when the council highways employee made his observation. That’s the nature of it. It lulls you into this leisurely stroll through a timeless rural England where it is always summer and then jolts you into the here and now with an amusing one-liner.

Detectorists has a warmth to it. I like the unhurried muddling through of the central characters and their world-weary pragmatism in the face of day-to-day problems. I love the gaps in the dialogue and the opportunities provided for reflection on the important things in life - family, friends, the natural world and a sense of time and place.

As I crawled gingerly out of a weather-bound leisure centre car park recently, I passed a black pick-up drawing up outside the school entrance. The circular sign on the door said “Find a field.” I also caught the word detectorists, but without doing a 180 degrees wheel spin on the ice, those were the only clues I had to go on.

The Detectorist Diggers Club arranges access to sites with land owners, organises metal detecting events and charges a fee to those taking part - thus the offer to find a field. I can see the attraction, and it obviously has some shared characteristics with railway heritage - most obviously by flagging up the intrinsic historical value of artefacts.  

More than just a glitch

A “sudden or temporary malfunction” didn’t really do it justice. It was totally stuffed. Computers [and cars] are great when they are working and a pain when they are not. I can barely believe that I had become so dependent on it.

The last one turned out to be what my mother would have described as “a pig in a poke.” I took it back where it came from in the Victoria shopping centre and they eventually offered me a replacement. This used to be the Great Central Railway’s Victoria station in the centre of Nottingham. Below it, a vast car park fills the space where the trains once ran. At street level, only the clock tower remains. From the depths of the car park, you can see the entrance to the tunnel that took the GCR northwards under Mansfield Road.

The railway was soon diving into a tunnel beneath Thurland Street at the southern end of the station, too. It burst out into daylight at Weekday Cross, a much photographed and frequently painted location [by the admirable Rob Rowland, amongst others] adjacent to the Broad Marsh and High Pavement, where the Contemporary art gallery now stands.

I enjoy gradually piecing together my mental jigsaw of Nottingham’s railway past, picturing in my mind’s eye the scenes that I missed while growing up over a hundred miles away. With my new computer now up and running, I’m comforted that my journeys to the city are rarely wasted in my imaginary world, either.

    

Ten to two feet

When Caerphilly Council gave out advice recently to walk like a penguin, with feet pointing slightly outwards, in order to keep upright when combatting the snow and ice inflicted on us by the Beast from the East, it resonated with me straight away. I’ve been doing that all my life.

Chris reminds me [regularly] that as I turned the corner out of Glen Park Road into Mount Pleasant Road, in Wallasey, in 1967, I was always immediately recognisable from my ten to two feet as she walked up the hill to school from the opposite direction and that was from a couple of hundred yards away, down at Hose Side corner - no mean feat!!

As I waddled into Newark Northgate station recently, I found the grand old Potts clock not knowing what time of day it was, though it was adamant that it wasn’t ten to two or even ten to ten. 

William Potts set up his clock making business in Leeds in 1833. The clocks were sold to cathedrals, town halls, schools and engineering works, as well as to the railways, both at home and abroad.

An iconic part of the platform one landscape at Newark Northgate for many a year, it must have seen every Eastern namer under the sun stream by during the 50s and 60s, so there’s a thought.

Luckily, for the benefit of today’s travellers there is an alternative digital affair nearby, which appears to be more in synch’ with both GMT and the current railway timetable.

Yet more bricks in the wall

In the leisure centre car park, a low wall separates the car parking bays from the surrounding flower beds. You can’t see the wall when you reverse your car into a space. Consequently, the area is frequently littered with piles of bricks where people have had little accidents. There was a new hillock of rubble there the other day.

The wall is then rebuilt, but before long it happens again at another spot. Why not do away with the wall altogether? It is pretty clear where the tarmac ends and the bushes begin. If a solid reminder is needed, then a single paved kerbstone would surely do the trick. Alternatively, why not make the wall high enough to be seen through a rear-view mirror?

One wall that I am only too pleased to see properly maintained is that built by Brunel in the mid-nineteenth century along the south Devon coastline at Dawlish. It remains as the only through rail route to the far south west of England, in spite of the sea’s frequent efforts to remove it. As such, it has to be defended at all costs - which actually turns out to be quite a lot.