Chris Forrest recalls a wide range of railway experiences from his schooldays, through to the summer of 1952, and then onwards into the mid-1960s.
The early experiences of trainspotting at Orrell and Wigan with visits to (fairly) local sheds and works as described in recent issues of Steam Days started me on a lifetime interest in railways, writing down locomotive numbers at first but soon taking up railway photography too. As I began to travel further afield I was never tempted to abandon interest in the background and history of the locomotives that I was recording.
Two school holiday camp trips helped to broaden my railway horizons. The first, at Easter 1948, was to Lowestoft, by train from Manchester (Central) and involving my only trip along the Great Northern & Great Eastern Joint line. Unfortunately, school discipline prevented me from recording the engines hauling the train, but it was a fascinating journey nonetheless. I was particularly impressed by the former Great Eastern Railway ‘B12’ 4-6-0s and they have been firm favourites ever since.
At Lowestoft there was a problem. In a little alleyway between the station and the road crossing to the docks I recorded a strange object numbered 7773, which on checking my ABC didn’t exist. Later in the week I returned to make sure that I had got it right, and I had. I eventually deduced that it was a ‘Y1’ class Sentinel, originally No 8401, which had been renumbered 7773 in the LNER intermediate scheme without ever being recorded and could have become No 68131 by now. Trainspotting wasn’t all plain sailing in those days.
The second school trip took us to West Wycombe in August 1949 by means of a charter train from Orrell, hauled by ex-LMS Stanier ‘Black Fiv
