Charles, Di, Cabbagers, Clean Clothes and Catholics - Train Spotting was where it was at!!

As a child, I loved buses and cars, boats and planes, but most of all, I loved trains. My entire collection of toys and games were either transport-related or Lego and my favourite of all was my trainset.

My trainset had been given to me by a great auntie in the early 70s and consisted of some old Triang '00' track and a station, coaches and a couple of engines which would have originally been manufactured in the early 60s. Extremely crude representations by today's standards but sadly already out of date. The old Triang 'Super 4' track had been superseded by 'System 6' which was simply a lowering of the rail height and without a converter track section, the two weren't compatible. The other issue was the flanges on the wheels of the rolling stock that had been designed to run on the old track were too deep to run on the new track. 'Olde-worlde' childhood problems!

Part of the remains of my trains!

Over the next six or seven years, new bits of model railway were added to create a great trainset at home in my bedroom which measured about 8' x 4' and folded up against the wall when I went to bed. By 13, in 1979 I had lost interest in the trainset, music and computers had stolen my heart, but the love of trains remained ingrained in my persona and had manifested itself in Trainspotting! When I was last in the UK at my Mum's in October, I went up in the loft and recovered the couple of boxes of model train bits I had left with the pie in the sky idea of recreating my 'trainset'. I managed to make a loop of track on the floor and got one engine to slightly and ever so noisily, move a few inches before grinding to a halt, so dejectedly, I put it all away again! Some things are best firmly left in the past I think!

Anyway. I said it. I was a trainspotter!

There is often some uncertainty over the correct terminology to use so I've created you a nice infographic to allay any confusion!

Trainspotting was unsurprisingly, not cool, although there were quite a few spotters at school in the late 70s, so I fitted right in but it did have some serious upsides. Whilst other kids were 'downtown' on a Saturday morning, or just loitering about during school holidays, my cousin and I were off on our adventures. We'd jump on our bikes after school and cycle 3 or 4 miles to a local railway bridge or junction and hang about there writing down the numbers of the trains that passed by. School holidays were even better. You see, my normally fairly strict parents had no objection to taking me down to Wakefield Westgate and letting me get on a train to go off somewhere trainspotting. We started out local to build up the trust. Doncaster, Leeds, Sheffield, York. Then we pushed the envelope a little further to Guide Bridge, Crewe, Derby and Newcastle. Money wasn't a problem; I had three paper rounds, one in the morning and one in the afternoon with the heavy-duty bonus Sunday morning round which was a killer as all the Sunday paper supplements weighed a ton! Come rain, shine or snow I'd be out there around the village delivering papers but the hard work paid big dividends. I could buy programs (on tape) for my ZX80. Bits and bats for my electronics tinkering but best of all, I could buy train tickets!

Clean Clothes and Awaydays

In the 1980s, Persil washing powder ran a number of promotions giving away two for one train tickets for collecting vouchers. I wasn't beyond a little mischief by regularly tipping a little of Mum's box of powder down the toilet to help her use it faster and thus garner the required number of tokens more quickly! Between my cousin and I, we saved dozens of 2 for 1 vouchers and towards the end of the summer holidays in 1980, had decided we needed to go trainspotting to London.

The tack we were going to use to swing it was that no harm could possibly come to us as we never ever actually left the station, in this case, Kings Cross, simply arriving there, spotting trains. Eating our egg and potted meat sandwiches and crisps, enjoying a cup of steaming hot British Rail tea and then jumping on the train back home. What could possibly go wrong? It was just another railway station like many we'd been to before albeit 200 miles away. We were 14 after all and about to start our last two years of high school and we would have to start paying full adult fares instead of children's half price fares when we got to 15........

After a family meeting, my Dad and Uncle decided to allow us to go. Jackpot. The day arrived and the instructions were clear. Phone call home when we arrive, phone call home when we are about to leave and most importantly: DO NOT LEAVE THE STATION.

The thing about Kings Cross is it was rubbish for trainspotting. Lying at the bottom end of the East Coast Mainline, which ran up to Edinburgh via Doncaster and York with a spur off to Leeds, we'd seen all the trains almost daily that ran up and down there. The Deltics, the Brush 4s and the sparkling new HSTs......

As a quick aside, the High-Speed Trains were introduced on to the ECML in 1978 and the last service to be hauled by one of those sets was last December, 42 years later but it's not the end. They are still plying their trade on other lesser lines around the UK and will be for quite some time.

The final farewell trip of the iconic HST on the ECML as it readies to depart Kings Cross The train had been repainted in its original livery and the trainspotters and railway nerds had turned up in their droves!

Photo used courtesy of YouTube channel @citytransportinfo

..........and we wanted to see stuff we hadn't seen before. Electrics from the Southern region, Euston, Liverpool Street, Waterloo. We wanted to visit the London depots at Willesden and Stratford and most of all, we wanted to visit Clapham Junction. The busiest railway station in the UK.

I'm not sure what day it was, Thursday seems to stick in my head but my cousin stayed over at our house the night before and my Dad dropped us at Wakefield Westgate station very early next morning on his way to work. With our parent's strict instructions ringing in our ears we boarded a train to Kings Cross. I can't even remember what loco it was but I used to love queuing at the buffet car for a cup of tea that I'm sure cost 14p! The egg and potted dog sandwiches had been finished long before we arrived, I mean seriously, they are rank after a few hours out of the fridge and we had enough cash in our pockets for a cheeky Wimpey should we come across one on our travels!

Gratuitous Wimpy shot. Anyone fancy a bender?

The ride to London was brilliant. Faces pressed to the window, pens and notepads in hand we passed many sidings and yards, stations and sheds on the way down, all the time, scribbling numbers like crazy.
Upon arriving at Kings Cross, we called our parents; "Yes, we arrived safely. No, we won't talk to any strangers. No, we won't leave the station." ........Then walked up and down each platform taking the numbers of the trains there at that moment and then went straight down the escalator to the tube. Sorry Dad, but Clapham Junction beckoned!

We'd used the tube on family holidays and days out to London so even at 14, we weren't phased by the complex, colourful cacophony of a London Underground Map. The plan was to take the tube to waterloo and then jump on a train for the short hop to Clapham Junction and train-spotting Nirvana!

Clapham Junction. The busiest station in Europe with between 100 and 180 trains an hour passing through during the day! If you want to read more, wikipedia is your friend!

Photo is uncredited from Google

And that's exactly what we did, without any fuss or bother and suddenly we found ourself in South London (though not in Clapham because Clapham Junction isn't actually in Clapham.....I've no idea either, so don't bother asking) stood on the platform, looking to see which was the longest platform and thus the best for viewing trains and writing down numbers.
Now the problem with Clapham Junction is that 95% of the trains that passed through were EMUs, and we didn't bother saving their numbers, we only collected the numbers of 'proper' engines and there weren't many of those passing through Clapham Junction, but not to worry, we had done what we set out to achieve but still had about 5 hours left before we needed to be back at Kings Cross for the train home, so back to the junior train spotters bucket list so we decided to get back on the tube, visit Euston for the West Coast Mainline electrics we wouldn't normally ever get to see and the to St Pancreas for the Midland Mainline and hopefully some rare 'Peaks' and so that's what we did. We rushed up and down platforms yelling "can we cab it please Mister" writing down numbers and generally breathing in far more diesel fumes than is healthy.

'Cab it' is getting onto the engine's footplate. Sometimes a driver would let us get on board to have a look at the engine and even sit in the driver's seat. If we were really lucky, he might let us stay onboard as he perhaps moved to another platform or 'rounded his train' at a terminus!

An EMU. Not a proper Engine in our eyes!

Photo found on Pinterest and uncredited

There was no drama and I have no really funny anecdotes to share I'm afraid, except that the day after we arrived home, my Mum was washing my trousers and went through the pockets as she normally did and found an underground ticket! "I found it, Mum," I said sheepishly before putting it in my box of tickets and general paraphernalia I always collected. She knew!

Charles and Di

The other spotters fun day was the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. On that day, British Rail charged a blanket fare price of 50p to ride the East Coast Mainline anywhere except for Edinburgh and London Kings Cross. Timetables were consulted we decided if we went down to Stevenage, that was the closest stop to London, we could then get on a train that would take us all the up to Berwick upon Tweed. Seriously, I like the journey more than the destination and that's something that still holds true today! Anyway, we got an early train from Westgate down to Stevenage and it was packed. Hardly anyone booked a seat back then so we were cramped and on our feet in the entrance vestibule of the coach until we finally got to Stevenage two hours later. A short wait and change of platform and we were back on a train north to Edinburgh that we were going to get off at Berwick, but then we ran into a problem in the shape of a ticket collector. He wasn't happy that we were basically using our single trip ticket like a rail rover and it wasn't something we'd done on purpose but realised the error of our ways when he came to stamp our ticket. Unlike the jobsworth miserable gits of today, he simply accepted our apologies and gave us his name so if we ran into any more problems that day with the single 50p ticket, we could tell any other ticket collectors he said it was all good! Top man, and so we continued. Up and down between north and south all day with an hour or so spent at Peterborough and Newcastle and this time, we really didn't leave the station so as not to have our ticket taken from us. By the time we got back to Westgate that night, there was barely any ticket left as it had been clipped so many times and apart from a knowing glance from the ticket collector at the gate, not an eyebrow was raised.

Was hardly going to waste a day off school to watch this crap when I could get out and spot some trains, was I ?

Would you let your child loose with trainloads of Catholic priests and Nuns?

Of course not, but in 1982, that's exactly what happened when Pope John Paul II visited the UK and in anticipation of all the excursion trains bringing Catholics from all over the country to an open-air mass in York throughout the previous night, we decided to go to York station and camp out overnight to catch all the rare engines that would be visiting. There was, however, a small problem. We weren't the only trainspotters with this idea and we watched as British Transport Police and station staff started throwing spotters off the station in the early hours. We'd have been screwed so we pushed a parcel cage right up to the far end of the Scarborough Branch platform and basically spent all night hidden there so we didn't see too many trains but could certainly here the hordes of excited nuns, priests and other assorted left footers as they poured off the trains en route to the open-air mass!

The Pope acknowledges the crowd at York racecourse and requests them not to wake the sleeping Nathen at York station on their way home. Not many people realise that the Pope doing a singalong on stage with his adoring fans provided the inspiration for Freddie Mercury and his famous singalong just 3 years later at Live Aid.

So what did you do with all the scribbled down numbers?

Good question. When we got back home, or in quiet times during the day we would take out our prized ABC Ian Allen book of Motive Power and go through the numbers in the notebook and using the class of loco, find them in our reference book before neatly underlining them to signify we had seen them. Obviously, if there was a line there already, we had seen that particular loco before and the aim was to collect as many sightings of each class of loco as possible. I kept my book meticulously up to date and connections in the newsagent meant I never missed a copy of 'Modern Railways' which published a list of engines that were been moved to storage, scrapped or changed shed allocations and I then amended my Ian Allen book accordingly, using a series of coloured highlighter pens to keep it as up to date as I possibly could.

The last edition of the Ian Allen book of Motive Power I owned. 1982. I have just bought one online as I binned all mine when I went all minimalist about 25 years ago. The one I have just bought has cost me a damn sight more than £1.95!

The rather debatable hobby didn't matter. Back then, perhaps I didn't realise it but it was the journeys and the freedom which counted most. At school, there was quite a number of 'spotters' who regularly gathered to show off their collections of numbers and probably pout of jealousy, I was accused of being a 'cabbager'. Cabbagers were people who cheated. Lied about the engines they had seen and underlined numbers in an attempt to garner praise for the collections and these 'cabbagers' were easy to spot! Certain locos stayed on certain parts of the network so I knew if someone had a load of Class 27 underlined, either they must have been to Scotland to see them, or they had lied. Luckily I'd been all over the network and I never cheated but out of jealousy I was standing accused so I never really got too involved with hobby's communities. Like today, I prefer to do my own thing. I never outed anyone else for cabbaging but I knew there were more 'cabbagers' at school than there were on Wakefield market!

By late 1982, I'd about given up with this phase. My shiny new Commodore 64 replaced my Vic 20 which in turn had replaced the ZX80 and my time was eaten up with tinkering. Messing with computers, electronics and music had taken over my free time. I was no programmer but the difference between me and the kids who wrote the most famous lines of code ever on demonstration home computers in electrical shops everywhere at that time,

10 print " @slobberchops has terrible taste in music"
20 goto 10

was that I knew what to 'poke' to disable the keyboard and thus cause the sales staff to have to turn the machine on and off again. At one time, I nearly had the whole C64 kernel memorised, not that it did me much good! Getting off the 'point' but I also had one of those Casio digital watches that had the built-in TV remote control functions and it never failed to make me laugh as I stood outside Comet's window, turning the volume up on the TVs as the staff rushed around trying to turn them down again. 'Small things amuse small minds' as they say!

A Link between Trainspotting and Steem?

Absolutely! I still hanker back to those days of British Rail tea and the standardised blue and yellow engines with their blue and grey carriages, and because of this interest, I am a member of many Facebook groups and online forums as I am for railway modelling. I very rarely comment because today, like back in the day I find most people in these groups anally retentive, rivet counting braggarts but the community scene is absolutely huge. Not only that, railway modelling is massively expensive hobby these days and if there were community groups here on Steem, they might actually be able to raise enough Steem to buy a waggon or a piece of track or something, surely this would be an encouragement?

Steemfest 1979

Not really, and as this is still an ongoing discussion, I will save the results for a later post albeit to say that I bought a number of Steem account names related to railway modelling and British railways quite a while back and also that I deserve a medal for keeping cool with some of the knobheads I have tried to open the Steem conversation with!

Another positive to emerge from this post is that I have thought of loads of other related things to bore write about so I will do the opposite of what others do when they give a list of previous articles and give you a list of upcoming articles instead, all 'inspired' by me writing this!

Why the world is becoming more analogue in the digital age

TOPS Numbering codes

Why Ernest Hemingway was far too descriptive

Why copyrighting photos of stuff you don't own is bollocks

Anatomy of a Railway Bridge

I'm also going to re-visit some of my old spotting haunts and take photographs to see how much they've changed over the intervening years. First in the series will be a look at Llandudno Junction. Salivating in anticipation yet?!!

That's it, congratulations on getting to the end and as always, take care, be safe and be happy always. Whatever you do and wherever you are :-)

@nathen007