THE NUMBERS GAME
In 1988 we, in Melbourne, were blessed with a visit by the LNER locomotive The Flying Scotsman. Hundreds of railway enthusiasts flocked to Southern Cross Railway Station to see this restored steam engine. My most vivid memory of this event, as I stood and cast my eyes over this wonderful piece of engineering, was the sight of a very old man whose wheelchair had been pushed to a point where he could stretch out a trembling hand and actually touch and stroke the wheel arches. My wife commented that had his life ended at that precise moment, for him that would have been pure ecstasy.
Seeing this engine at such close quarters reminded me of my early teenage days when I, and many other boys, would congregate at the extreme ends of the platforms of Snow Hill and New Street Stations in Birmingham, and studiously note down the numbers of the engines as they emerged from the tunnels and roared into the stations.
Trainspotters, as we were called, tended to be very partisan: we would “specialise” in just one of the four railway companies that existed before Nationalisation. I was very much an aficionado of the Great Western Railway (GWR); their locomotives were different in that they had a brass safety valve on the top of the boiler where the other three companies’ engines all had domes. In addition, they had a wonderful numbering system: you could tell the wheel arrangement i.e. 4-6-0, 4-4-0, 2-6-0, 0-4-2, 2-8-0 or 0-6-0 etc., and class of the engine by its number.
George, a school friend, was a great follower of the London, Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) and travelled on it frequently as his parents were Scots and all their relatives were in Scotland. He and I often had furious arguments about the merits of the locomotives of our favourite railway companies, which occasionally became heated when neither of us would back down.
For the GWR there were the mighty passenger train 4-6-0 classes, the Kings and Castles, both 4-cylinder express engines, backed up by 2-cylinder versions, the Halls, Granges, Manors and Counties.
The LMS used another type of engine, the 4-6-2, which were collectively known as Pacifics. George was fanatical about these engines, Princess Royal and Coronation classes. He persuaded me to accompany him to Tamworth where these streamlined monsters thundered through, heading expresses to the far north. I was told they never frequented Birmingham because the curves on the approaches to New Street Station were such that no Pacific engine could negotiate them.
George’s ambition was to spot and underline all these Pacifics in his Ian Allan ABC Spotters Book. If anyone ever used initiative and prospered by catering to a sudden fad that arose during a certain time period, Ian Allan was the man. These books were the trainspotters’ bible, well presented with lists and names of all locomotives in action on every mainline railway. Editions appeared annually, and there were always withdrawals of obsolete engines and new classes to whet the appetite of the average trainspotter.
George and I rarely spotted any LNER engines; this railway was in the eastern counties, too far for a day trip to view them, but we usually purchased the Ian Allan books for all four railway companies because when on holiday there was a chance of spotting one.
I was familiar with the Southern Railway; all my relatives lived in or about London and we frequently travelled there to see my grandmother and various aunts, all based around Clapham. My grandmother’s house was near Clapham Junction, at that time reputed to be the busiest railway junction in Britain, if not the world. My Southern Railway Ian Allan book was filled with underlined engines and electric train units, in contrast to my Midlands contemporaries who rarely saw a Southern Railways train.
In later years, in my forties, when commuting into Melbourne by rail, the urge to note down the numbers of diesel locomotives on the way became irresistible. I armed myself with biro and notebook and noted every engine I saw, pretending I was completing the newspaper’s daily crossword.
I meet many fellow Australians of British origin who passed through the same trainspotting phase. We converse at length on the merits of the GWR Kings and Castles, the LNER Pacifics, the Southern Merchant Navy class and the LMS Coronation, Royal Scot and Jubilee classes.
Now, alas, these locomotives are no more, except for a few rescued from the breakers yards by enthusiasts. Those that survive can be seen on private railway systems scattered around England and Scotland, railway tracks that survived the Beeching axe. One of these private railways, the Severn Valley Railway, I used daily when it was still part of the GWR, travelling by railcar from Bewdley to Kidderminster, then via express to Birmingham.
As for my friend George, his railway fanaticism extended far beyond his schooldays: he worked in the mechanical model business. He became associated with Pete Waterman, who once owned the Flying Scotsman. Waterman commissioned George and others in later years to construct scale models of many former railway engines, an organisation named “Just Like the Real Thing”. George was responsible for the construction of many of these excellent, brilliantly made models. Ironically many were Great Western locomotives.