Each a Glimpse

(from a spotters notebook)

Many memories dash to the front of my mind when I take the time out to recall the heady days of steam. Patricroft, Newton Heath, Snow Hill, venues as far apart as Gateshead and Bristol, Longsight and Diarycoats are remembered in incredible detail as shadowed engine sheds and windblown stations. The sheer volume of Train Spotters, and the information network that was generated on where locomotives were long before Ian Allen could hope to get into print was a testament to the interest and untapped industry of the time.

Opening one of my carefully preserved spotters notebooks found me recalling the first time I alighted from the Nottingham train at Grantham and moving to the main line platform just in time to see two Gresley masterpieces pass at full chat in the centre of the station, leaving me literally spinning and with an indelible picture of the lone W1 60700 and 60008 Dwight D Eisenhower etched into my mind forever.

I turn the page to the 20th July 1957 and now one of my regular visits to Grantham. Today my train is pulled out of Nottingham Victoria by 64248, a 38A J6. It's amazing that these grimy pages contain the actual grit from these locos of 1957. I can still smell the leaking steam couplings on the carriages and from up front 64248 throws balls of soot back into my 12 year old eyes and onto the pages of this book through the inevitable open sash window as we enter the Parliament Street tunnels.

Eighteen locomotives are logged between Nottingham Victoria, somewhere near today's Boots store in the Victoria Center, (Only the old clock tower remains of the old Great Central masterpiece today) and our arrival at Grantham, Nottingham's window on the East Coast main line 25 miles to the east.

These precursors of the day include 92076, which must have been coasting south from its native Doncaster through the old GCR system, a variety of midland engines including 40487 and 40484 spotted from London Road High Level and a rare bird of passage 67800, the very last of the 100 L1's, far from its hunting ground of Kings Cross, although it wasn't a 'cop' on this day so it must have been around for a while. Colwick 38A had several of these engines at the time and I can only assume that 67800 was on loan on this July day 36 years ago.

Before setting off across the Trent Valley to Ratcliffe and a Sunday night BBC 1 production of little midlands villages, we pass 38A Colwick with it's lines of Austeritys and Tinys, who wait to take turns to thunder up Colwick Bank day and night moving the nations goods around the country. Bingham, Bottesford, where we cross another LNER line at right angles, Elton and Orsdon stations are serviced, each with the black Wolsley or Series E standing at the Station Gate waiting for the road to reopen.

Along with my companion travelers, spotters, milk churns and parcel post, we drift into Grantham, or clank, to be more precise recalling the mannerisms of the J6. Joining the main line north of the station we steam through the signal gantry that encompasses the rail complex and all eyes are turned on the yard and the slumbering giants that await their next turn of duty.

Rocketing south from my adopted home in the North East on today's electric service, its hard enough to see Grantham. The shed and yard have gone, even the reversing triangle where, through the generosity of her driver I rode on the footplate and actually operated the regulator of Mallard, is lost in the industrial estate. But it was a different Grantham back in 57, as the staging post for engines between the northern cities of Leeds, York, Newcastle and Edinburgh, and Kings Cross in the south, Grantham was a paradise of steam.

Today the first engine we see at Grantham is the A3 60112 St Simon. The penciled cross against the number tells me that St Simon was not a 'cop' but as to whether the last numbered A3 was standing in the yard or on active duty was never recorded in the dusty surface of my notebook.

The numbers in the book stand out as old friends, and even today I don't have to look up the names of all the locos. On this July day in 1957 I will 'spot' 112 steam engines including 11 A3's with those dashing names coined in a more imaginative and romantic era. 60039 Sandwich, 60046 Diamond Jubilee, 60051 Blink Bonny, 60052 Prince Palatine, 60054 Prince of Wales, 60056 Centenary, 60058 Blair Athol, 60059 Tracery, 60065 Knight of Thistle, 60110 Robert the Devil and 60113 St Simon. None would have caused me to leave the course of my nomadic wanderings around the station centered mostly on the 'down' platform, which afforded the best views of Grantham shed, 35B as it was then. A quick note in the book and perhaps a wander over to Smiths to view the latest Combine.

The A4's were a different story. The 'Streaks' as we called them would announce their impending arrival with that haunting chime, and we would move to the centre platforms to watch the great machines rock towards the station where they would appear to release a great final burst of energy to sprint howling through the old buildings like a banshee, causing passengers and spotters alike to take that involuntary step backwards in deference to their passing.

Of the 34 in the class, today 13 of them will pass through Grantham, and one, 60012 Commonwealth of Australia will action a tick against its number in my 'Sterling No 6 notebook'. For the rest of the day I will savor the moment later in the evening, when in the quiet of my bedroom in the company of my Nottingham Forest and Bridgette Bardot posters I shall prepare my rule and green pen and ceremoniously underline the A4 in my 'Combine'. My interests in Nottingham Forest and Steam will compliment each other for many years as I follow the Reds to their away matches. My interest in Bridgette Bardot will never wain.

Sister engines 60010 Dominion of Canada, 60013 Dominion of New Zealand, 60014 Silver Link, 60016 Silver King, 60017 Silver Fox, 60021 Wild Swan, 60022 Mallard, 60025 Falcon, 60029 Woodcock, 60030 Golden Fleece, 60032 Gannet and 60034 Lord Faringdon will all pass through on this busy Saturday. I shall gaze at the Silver Fox motif on the boiler of 60017 and wonder again how it would look on my bedroom wall. I will only cast a casual glance at 60022 Mallard when it stands down from a north bound express to be prepared for its next duty south. Incredibly I will not complete the A4's during my spotting years, 60009 Union of South Africa will elude me over a period of five years, always moving away when I approached, always being where I was the day before, or so it seemed.

There will be 10 more green lines to be added to the combine by the end of the day, B16 61416 will drift lazily south with a light freight, passing shyly between the station and the loco shed, It will be spotted and receive it's tick along with V2's 60830, 60925, 60940, B1's 61060, 61190, 61364, 64262, J39 64909 and C12 67367. I wonder now what 67367 was doing in Grantham so far from its Cambridge home. The little 4-4-2 tank was nearly 60 years old then and one can only speculate at what task brought it across the system divide.

During the day A1 60117 Bois Roussel will pass through with an 11 car pullman, the flat brown and cream sided coaches causing spotters to compare notes on the exact makeup of the train long after it has left the little market town behind. My record shows that Pullman cars 62, 64, 106, 70, 74, 60, 63, 82, Rosemary, Adrian and Lydia were on the move today, perhaps making up the Tyne Tees Pullman?

Of the east coast greyhounds we shall see 60113 Great Northern, 60114 W P Allen, 60118 Archibald Sturrock, 60119 Patrick Stirling, 60123 H A Ivatt, 60124 Kenilworth, 60128 Bongrace, 60133 Pommern, 60134 Foxhunter, 60149 Amadis, 60155 Borderer, 60156 Great Central, 60506 Wolf of Badenoch, 60513 Dante, 60516 Hycilla, 60520 Owen Tudor, 60523 Sun Castle and 60538 Velocity, all breathing life into the station during the day along with 25 V2's, the unsung hero's of the east coast.

The history of this July day at Grantham, duly recorded in my schoolboy scrawl, will never rock future antiquarians. But in the 90's I can only speculate at the volume of travelers on this artery of the country long before the motorways snaked north 30 miles to the west. Grantham was still un-bypassed on the A1 and motorcars bowled along without hindrance up and down the Great North Road.

It seems incredible today when I travel 100, 200 miles to see and travel behind one steam loco in harness that so much steam was there to reach out and to touch, to smell and savor. Nowadays I stand on familiar stations and bridges of my youth gazing at those minds eye ghosts of the past and realising that it was all just a glimpse, now gone forever.

Merlin 1992

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