A Day in the Life

When Andy sent me some interesting old pictures he had recently come across, a bit of detective work was necessary to tie down the place and time. Between 1966 and the end of steam in 1968, Andy, Ian, Dave and Grah’ passed their driving tests [for cars, not trains] and this made things quite a bit easier in helping us to get to the places that we needed to be, as the remaining steam classes became conveniently concentrated in the north west of England.

It was the 28^th October 1966 and we had started our youth hostelling half-term break - as some of us were still at school - with a visit to Carlisle Upperby and Kingmoor sheds. Amongst the surviving locomotives were the green namers of the Britannia Class - old before their time, of course. There were 6 on 12B and 11 more on 12A, including 70025 Western Star, 70034 Thomas Hardy and 70050 Firth of Clyde.

With thanks to Andy Mace for the use of his photos and for providing another reminder of how lucky we were in our youth to have such supportive parents who encouraged our activities. This helped us to establish lasting friendships, have enough cash [one way or another] to travel around, thus providing opportunities to get to know our wonderfully varied landscape first-hand, to meet up with groups of girls at youth hostels, and make the most of our love of steam right up to the end - and beyond, if you get my drift!