Worcester

It took me a little time to get my bearings. There was a gap of 59 years since I last stepped out onto these platforms. The sheds were still full of steam locos on our special train trip in 1964, hauled from here by Castle Class No. 5054 Earl of Ducie. There were 7 other Castles on the shed on that day -7005, 7022, 7034, 7013, 5042, 5096 and 7025. We were heading for a shed bash in South Wales, and I remember that the engine that was meant to take us back to Crewe from Worcester, A1 Class No. 60114 WP Allen, failed. The sheds complex was certainly very substantial at that time.

The Georgian-style Shrub Hill station building dates from 1865. It has operated as a joint GWR/MR station throughout its history. The delightful Grade II listed Victorian waiting room on platform two, decorated with Maw’s tiles, has been refurbished in recent times. Shrub Hill is well-known in the railway community for hanging on to its array of semaphore signals [for now] and especially the almost unique large main aspect “banjo” signal on platform one. Café Loco, on the same platform has entrances from the booking hall as well as from the platform. There are framed prints on the walls of some recognisable railway paintings.  

Support walls for the former train shed which was dismantled in the 1930s are evident, but a lot of the original station building is currently covered with cladding while some further intensive restoration work takes place behind them and thus hidden from view. Both platforms are bi-directional and there is a small bay - platform three - at the north end. Both Shrub Hill and Foregate Street are well served by a range of services – including to Birmingham via different routes, Cheltenham Spa, Oxford, London Paddington, Hereford, Bristol and South Wales.

The Trainspotter’s Notebook

This book by Francis Bourgeois is imbued with infectious enthusiasm. I never imagined that there was so much fun to be had with diesels, having hardly welcomed them in in the 1960s, as steam gradually gave up the ghost. I had to adapt pretty quickly and, certainly begrudgingly, I came to accept them as the main actors thereafter. After all, I kept on spotting them, travelling behind them and photographing them.

I admired the HSTs when they were new – screaming through Goring and Streatley in their bright blue and yellow kit. The loudest noise I ever heard a diesel make was a Deltic under the roof at Leeds Central. Sudden blasts from both engines - the loco’ had appeared dormant up to that point, which shot powerful jets of blue smoke up to the rafters. Why it did that, I have no idea, but it was very theatrical. I copped my last Western diesel – D1028 Western Hussar – at Newton Abbott. As it approached in its maroon livery, I had a premonition that this was finally the one – and it was.

Francis Bourgeois is an excitable young man and the first ever celebrity trainspotter, through his action videos and the TV appearances that followed. I guess I had never even thought of that as a possibility. He is very candid in this very readable account about how trains play on his emotions, as well as on his positive relationships with his fellow spotters, his dealings with those he comes across while following his obsession and his friendships amongst the railway community - such a large proportion of whom have always been enthusiasts at heart.

Effervescent personality springs from every page of this book, and there is abundant warmth and humanity, too. It made for perfect bedtime reading, reminding me perhaps about how reserved and almost embarrassed I might sometimes have been in the past about proclaiming my hobby. I should have simply rejoiced in it quite publicly, as Francis Bourgeois manages at every turn.