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]