Your memories of Live Steam please.

A school friend's house had a railway cutting at the bottom of his garden. When big goods trains passed it was sometimes like the house in the old 1950s "Ladykillers" film - the floorboards would vibrate and crockery would chatter in the cupboards.

The fence by the line was no real obstacle to schoolkids, and we used to do the usual stuff of putting (old) pennies on the line when we heard a train a-comin'. They often vibrated off before it arrived, until we thought of chewing gum.

Once we had a fog signal - basically a milk bottletop-sized red-painted aluminium inverted cup with a ring of percussion caps around the rim and a charge of black powder in the middle, with 2 soft metal tapes to wrap around the rail.

In the end, it occurred to us that a loud bang - when there was no fog around - might cause to driver to stop the train and investigate, and we weren't sure we'd get away in time, so we chickened out. The fog signal finally got taken to a shooting range years later and detonated from a safe distance by rifle shot.

During the early 60s the engines that came by began to look dirtier and tattier, and many of them clanked with alternate puffs, as if maintenance was getting slacker - which it probably was.

Our family moved south and I lost contact with that friend, but those days stuck in memory.

Coming home from the Saturday morning pictures meant crossing the railway, if the gates were shut it was over the footbridge. This is where the target practice came in, to wait for the steam train and throw an apple core down the chimney but the drivers were on it and opened the blast nozzle so we were enveloped in steam.

I often wondered if they opened the front and found apple cores in there.

Hi, the house that I was born in had a mainline passing at the bottom of the street, which was about 40 M away, there were two other lines beyond some trees on the other side of the track, there was a back service lane to the terrace, which could be accessed from either end of the street, and we could get a good view of trains passing, but there was a signal on the short stretch between the street and the lane at the back, and very often a train had to stop while traffic was going in and out of the other two tracks, so we could get a real close look at the steam locos while they were waiting there. The mainline could be seen from the back bedroom of the house for about 86 M or so before disappearing behind the terrace some 40 M or so away from our terrace, we would all be watching out for an aunt of ours as she waved a hanky from a window on the train, when she was going back home to London, which was steam hauled back then. On Saturday mornings we would often wake up to goods trucks and or wagons, as they were all shunted about to form outbound trains, which were done with J69's till about 1960, when the first BR 03 0-6-0 shunters came along, which was more or less when steam was finished in our part of the world. It could often be seen at night when steam locos were going into the station, when the firebox door was open, and you got a good glimpse of orange which also lit up the inside of the cab. When we went to junior school, we had to cross the railway, but there was a footbridge, but the abutments were built of brick and ere too high for us to see over, and the bridge was made of high steel sheets that were impossible to see over without a ladder, however there was a small gap between the brickwork and the steel bridge on both sides and at both ends, but only one person at a time could look through them. Very often when we came home from school, they would be shunting freight about in the station sidings, which meant the crossing had to be closed to road traffic, so instead of going over the bridge, we would stop at the gates and watch a J69 going backwards and forwards a few times to get the trucks in the right order for either carrying on their journey or being sent out to the docks beyond the station. Summer holidays were a good time to see trains coming and going at the crossing, but there was nearly always queues of holiday makers in their cars as the road was the best route to bypass the town centre, and you mostly saw an ice cream man on his tricycle with the ice box over the two front wheels, and he would ride up and down the queue of traffic on the pavement or just be waiting at the crossing gates. We could see much of the outer part of the station from the kiddies play area (swings etc,) where the locos would be coupled up to their trains and waiting for the off, when the smoke would puff out vigorously as they got up too speed for about the 100 M towards the crossing, all steam vanished completely by 1962 and the diesels had taken their place, but we moved away from the railway area on 4th July 1966, but we could see one of the other tracks beyond a few other houses and across a very large playing field from the back upstairs bedrooms, but only DMU's used that track and at a less frequency but then that line was closed in 1968 except for the use of a freight train to a local quarry once a day.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 23/01/2023 17:34:33

My earliest memory of live steam was being sat in the coal bunker of our Aveling & Porter steam roller "Billy Boy" travelling at four miles an hour from near Knaresborough to the Pickering steam rally in 1965 when I was eight or nine years old.

I actually fell asleep at one point even though you could not hear yourself speaking above the noise. We travelled hundreds of miles to steam rallies by road with various different traction engines in those days.

It was only in the late seventies that we got a low loader, but even that was a vintage 1946 chain driven Scammell. In fact our Burrell road loco "Dalesman" was faster then the Scammell come to think of it.

Happy days

Phil

Edited By Phil P on 23/01/2023 20:35:47

I travelled a lot on steam trains still in daily use when I backpacked around India in about 1980. Lovely to see and hear. But with all the carriage windows open in the Indian heat, everything inside was covered in black gritty coal ash. Pretty messy and not all that romantic. But it was a great way to travel.

I mostly went second class where you had a seat reserved in an alcove with half a dozen other passenger so always plenty of good company and some very interesting conversations. And the food was just amazing. You ordered it at one station, and a station or two later, an Indian curry feast was delivered to you from the station cookhouse. It was a moveable dinner party for sure.

Third class was a total melee. No reserved seating and they sold as many tickets as they could. So you had to fight for a seat, or even room to stand, and spend the journey jammed in unable to hardly move. And there seemed to be a less than endearing custom. Each little alcove had a small fan like a desk fan with wire guard around it, suspended from the ceiling. The preferred place for those sitting on the upper luggage rack to put their sweaty sandals to cool off was right on top of the wire guard around the fan, thus blowing fragrant sandal fumes over the passengers below. Unforgettable!

Very vague memories of steam engines at Barry Station when I was a boy in the 60s.

My dad used to take us round Woodham's yard from time to time.

Was hugely impressed to see Iron Maiden at a show, first and only time I met a film star!

Plenty of memories of preserved rail.

Neil

My Dad worked very long hours and us kids rarely saw him. Sunday's were his day off (though 9 times out of 10 he'd still have to 'go in' to fix something!) however, on one when he was free I clearly remember him talking me for a walk, I must have been on about 4 at the time, which ended up at the level crossing on part of the Birmingham to Wolverhampton main line close to where we lived, and the quite terrifying site and sound of a massive (was to me at that age) noisy express appearing in the distance and finally thundering through the crossing. (They used to get quite a speed on over that very long straight stretch).

Funny how things stick in your mind, I can fully picture the scene now in fine detail, some 65+ years after the event! Left me with a real love of engineering & steam in particular!

regards