The Railway Children

My introduction to trainspotting was during the school summer holidays in 1960 at the end of my first year at West Leeds school.
A few friends who lived near me in Bramley invited me along on a day out trainspotting.
We set off on foot from Bramley on a tour of locomotive depots or "sheds" as we called them. Our first stop was Farnley Junction shed at the top of a long hill. Then we walked along a footpath past Copley Hill sidings and loco shed and over a very long metal footbridge to Holbeck, one of the main sheds in Leeds. If we had enough time, we would climb up a wall and an embankment to reach a spot known as the "magic triangle". This area was a patch of railway land located at the centre of a triangle of tracks. From there, we could spot almost every train coming out of both Leeds Central and City stations. Even today, the Holbeck triangle of railway viaducts between Water Lane, Globe Road, and Springwell Road still exists in part and has a memorial to a railwayman who was killed while working there. From Holbeck it was only a short walk to Central Station for more trainspotting and we could take the train back to Bramley.

I was obviously hooked on trainspotting because I asked my mother to buy me Ian Allen's Combined Volume of BR Locomotives for Xmas that year in which I could record the numbers of locos I had spotted simply by underlining them in the lists the book contained.
Ian Allen also published shed guides which gave the location of all UK locomotive depots and directions for getting to them. In the next couple of years accompanied by my pals, I travelled further afield by train during school holidays on trainspotting day trips. We visited several places, including Doncaster station and locomotive works where I saw the prototype "Deltic" loco in its blue and yellow striped livery speeding nonstop through the station. The return fare to Donny was 3/6d .We also went to York station, shed, and railway museum, and travelled by the Trans Pennine train to Manchester Victoria and Exchange stations, which had the longest platform in the UK at the time. We caught a bus to Altrincham to visit sheds at Trafford Park and then went to Piccadilly station, which was the terminus of the overhead electrified Woodhead line from Manchester to Sheffield. This was my first sight of electric mainline locos, and we took one of the electric-hauled trains for a short trip. We visited Longsight shed and also went to Belle Vue Zoo in the afternoon.

It wasn't long before we all had road bikes and would cycle long distances to railway destinations as far away as York & Skipton, in addition to all the loco sheds in Leeds. York shed with its two large roundhouses is now the National Railway Museum. I have a good memory of a day out in York, on my own, in summer 1961. I decided to combine train spotting with sightseeing. I went to the roof of York minster and from the tallest tower had a superb view over the city. The river and the rail lines curving into the station were gleaming in the sun and to top it all an express train hauled by a streamlined Gresley A4 Pacific loco, glided around the curve of shining rails as it entered the station. If only I had owned a camera with a telephoto lens! On another trip to York, we found two "Streaks " on shed and cabbed them both. i.e. climbed onto the footplate. One of them had a corridor tender to enable the driver and fireman to be relieved on non-stop express services.
The locomotive works at Doncaster and York manufactured new locomotives. Local engine sheds each had a number, Holbeck was 55A I remember. A number of locomotives would be allocated to each shed. Each loco carried its shed number on a small plate. After a few visits, you would have collected all these local locos but the shed also serviced visiting locos from other sheds so there was generally something new to see. One loco we regularly spotted was a Jubilee Class loco "Bihar & Orissa" which we nicknamed "Boris & 'Orris".

I didn't take up photography until I bought a 35 mm camera in my late teens so the only photographs I took in my early trainspotting days were these two at Holbeck with a box Brownie camera circa 1961.

Ian Allan's Combined Volume - the trainspotter's bible, cost 11/6 in 1963.

The cover Photo is an streamlined A4 Pacific Locomotive , designed by Nigel Gresley. We called these locomotives "Streaks"

Jubilee Class No 45584 "North West Frontier"

A1 Class No 60134 "Foxhunter"

Leeds -Holbeck, shed no. plate.

When I say we "visited" a loco shed I don't mean an authorised official visit. We just used to turn up to the shed, walk in through the gates and then wander around the sites collecting numbers. Sometimes a friendly railway worker would give us the nod or at other times a foreman might yell at us to clear off. At larger establishments such as York or Doncaster Works, if we were lucky, we could occasionally just tag onto the back of an official party of visitors and no one noticed.
Trainspotting at major stations was possible for the price of a penny platform ticket. You would usually find a small group of spotters at the end of the longest platform where you could observe all trains entering or leaving the station. Leeds Central station was one of my favourite spots. Named express trains such as the" White Rose "and the "Yorkshire Pullman" terminated there. These London express trains were often pulled by mainline locos stabled at LNER's "Top Shed " at Kings Cross. Trains from London would have a few coaches which would carry on to Bradford, very often hauled by a Jubilee Class loco, on the line which ran through the cutting bordering the school.

Leeds Central station was a terminus railway station in Leeds for over 100 years. The last train left from Leeds Central on 29 April 1967. It was an early evening service to Harrogate filled by the usual Birmingham RC&W DMU. Detonators were placed on the track by railway staff which exploded as the train rolled away from the platform and past the signal box on its final departure. After closure, part of the station site became a Royal Mail sorting office. Some of the station fittings were preserved at the NRM in York. including the cast iron railings and gate to the platforms where you showed your ticket. There was also a blackboard with a chalk message about the final train to leave the station.

In the early 1960s, I would spend a couple of weeks in the summer holidays visiting relatives who lived in Romford, Essex. My uncle worked in planning for BR at Stratford and my aunt had worked at Liverpool Street station where she occasionally did the station announcements. This gave me the chance to train spot in London. I vividly remember seeing 70000 "Britannia" for the first time thundering through Romford station.

Trainspotting had a vocabulary all of its own. I still remember much of it today probably better than the German irregular verbs I was learning at about the same time.
If you were a trainspotter these terms might mean something to you:

"Streak" - universal nickname, for the Nigel Gresley Class A4 Pacific locos of which Mallard is the best-known example.
"German Blinkers" - German-style smoke deflectors
"Light engine" - a loco not hauling wagons or coaches
"Double Header" - train hauled by 2 locos
"Banker" - train assisted by a 2nd loco at the back often used on steep gradients.
"Boris & 'Orris" - Nickname for Jubilee class loco "Bihar & Orissa" often seen on-shed at Leeds.
"Co-Co and Bo-Bo" - not clowns but wheel arrangements for the bogies of diesel locomotives.

The Railway Club
Interest in trains was probably helped by the fact that the school had a railway running along the fence in a cutting between us and the girls' school. At break some of us would make a beeline to see the Leeds - Bradford train which was often pulled by a Jubilee Class Loco and frequently passed the school during our morning break. These trains also passed my home further along the line in Bramley. I was in my 3rd year at WLHS before I became aware that the school had a railway club which held meetings after school in the history room. The teacher in charge was Jim Morgan but my fellow 3rd former Ian Copley was the leading light and organiser. These group trips, mostly by coach, were properly organised with official permission to enter the railway sites.
Brian Palmer remembered the formation of the club. In 1956 or so, there was a club of trainspotters. A group of them invited me to accompany them to Doncaster one Saturday to collect "namers". Their parents would only agree if a member of staff was involved. Old collector in my youth, I said yes and we had a successful day, even paying an illegal visit to the 'sheds' to collect more names. All impossible nowadays, I guess.

In the mid-1960's the railway club organised a number of trainspotting trips all over the country during half-term holidays. On these trips we witnessed the passing of the steam era. Early trips were to locomotive works and "sheds" full of steam engines, by 1965 we were visiting scrapyards in Barry, South Wales.
On the Midlands and South Wales trip in 1965 we visited 18 locomotive depots ("sheds") and works, 4 scrapyards in South Wales and 2 docks in the space of about 3 days. The trip organisers were Ian Copley and David Cavill and two teachers who often went along were Jim Morgan and Tony Norcliffe. Another trip in 63 or 64 took us up the East Coast main line to Newcastle and Edinburgh, then across to Glasgow and back down the West Coast mainline. For some reason (train delayed or cancelled) we all spent the third night in the waiting room of Carlisle station playing a card game called Cheat in front of a roaring fire with a snowstorm raging outside. Whenever we heard the rumble of a passing train someone was delegated to go out onto the platform to get the number of the loco, preferably without letting in too much of a blast of cold air and snow flurry to discomfort the rest of us. Anyone who has read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch will appreciate the dilemma. (In the Gulags outside work for prisoners was compulsory until the temperature reached -50C. One unlucky prisoner was deputed to go outside and check the thermometer without breathing on it or letting cold air into the hut.)

The day the Merchant Navy came to Leeds.

In 1964 Southern Region Merchant Navy class loco no.35012, named "United States Lines", visited Holbeck shed en route to head a special train up to Settle and Carlisle the next day. I heard about it on the grapevine and hundreds of us flocked to Hobeck shed that evening for a rare sighting of a SR mainline loco in Leeds! I cycled there after school. One reason that evening is etched in my memory is that I should have been revising for my Maths O level exam the following day.

Amazingly, I found this photo online almost 60 years after the event. I remember there was some discussion among the railwaymen whether this engine could use the Holbeck turntable owing to size or weight restrictions.

BR Southern Region loco no.35012 "United States Lines" at Holbeck shed in 1964.

Once a trainspotter always a trainspotter?

I have no idea what the attraction of trainspotting was. I'll only make two observations : First it's a boy's thing-, I never saw Jenny Agutter or any other girl among the gaggle of trainspotters on any station platform that I visited and secondly boys seem to be compulsive collectors, be it cigarette cards, football cards , stamps etc. At least collecting train numbers was harmless unlike collecting birds' eggs or butterflies. With some collectors it's a lifelong passion but others grow out of it.
My own interest in trains waned immediately after leaving school which coincided with the end of the steam era on BR. I was definitely a BR Green and Carmine Red livery fan and was much less interested in the succeeding BR Blue period and the later privatisation. I had less interest in diesels and none in DMUs and EMUs. (Diesel and electrical Multiple Units) with the possible exception of Deltic mainline locos, named after the Greek letter Delta shape of their Napier engines. At the time Deltics were the world's most powerful diesel locomotive, and introduced the first 100mph diesel passenger train service to the UK. They regularly ran at higher speeds and were clocked at 125mph descending Stoke Bank.

Mike Collins, an old boy who worked as a civil engineer on the railways in the 1960s and got up close and dirty with both steam and diesel, made the following comments: please do not associate me romantically with railway locomotives in any way. My early sort (steam) were just damned nuisances when I was stuck in the middle of a tunnel, and unable to make my way out because of the lack of any visibility, and the later diesels, combined with weekend excavators, again in tunnels, are believed to have caused my 24-year-old chest disease, from which I was expected to die in 1990! So, no love there, either!

Richard Craven commented: I enjoyed reading your trainspotting piece. brought back some good memories. I regularly did the 55c 56c and 55a tour on my bike. Many trips to Donny (3/6 return) and York. I only went on one Railway Club trip, to the Manchester sheds, Newton Heath and a few others. It was one winter evening, late '62 or early '63 I remember there was a heck of a lot of snow and the trip back to Leeds was quite hairy.

"There is a corner of a foreign field that will always be a part of Hunslet ".

In retirement, my interest in railways has rekindled somewhat. I enjoy visiting railway museums and preserved railways at home and abroad. I like train travel particularly abroad. I have often visited Switzerland, which has a marvellous railway system, and have travelled on both the Glacier and Bernina Express trains. My last train trip of note was on the Nilgiris Mountain Railway in Tamil Nadu, Southern India. I must admit that finding an old loco in far-flung parts of the world always raises my spirits and when you read the manufacturer's nameplate it's amazing how many were made in Leeds by the Hunslet Engine Co. or John Fowler when we really were the workshop of the world.

The Nilgiri Mountain Railway (NMR) is a metre gauge railway in Nilgiris district, Tamil Nadu, India, built by the British in 1908. The railway is operated by the Southern Railway and is the only rack railway in India.

The author "cabbing" an X class loco No. 37386 at Ooti station on the Nilgiri Mountain Railway. ( rt)

I found this little, Leeds built, tank engine in Port Douglas, Australia, retired after a working life in the sugar cane fields in Northern Queensland.