Childhood travel memories

[whole diary]

[grahame]

I spent a quiet couple of hours on my own yesterday pottering through Dad's house; Dad passed away in January, and gradually his home is turning into a house as we've been working through several lifetimes of effemera - Mum and Dad, and my Gran, moved there in the 1980s bringing what were already lifetime collections with them, and all three have now passed on - still loved, remembered, and with us in spirit and their wisdom living through us, though they're no longer physically with us.

Dad was a photographer, and an artist with the protographic medium too - there are many pictures around.  This one caught my eye and triggered my memories

The print was black and white; the colour is from the application of translucent watercolour crayons from the days that colour slides and especially colour prints were expensive and outside the budget and control of the typical amateur prhotographer.

The picture brings back memories of childhood holidays - of the helter-skelter type walking down to the seafront, of buses connecting with trains, of the chines along the coast, of walking through the disused tunnel on the branch that lead to the west station, of arriving and leaving for holidays by train and transferring at the pier on and off the boats.

Posted here because ... just because I want to share.  But also posted here because someone I bumped into the other day - to my huge surprise - also has similar memories of this; I recall it being said to me, but I'm trying to remember who made the comment - so if he's a reader it will bring backmemories to him too.

Where are your childhood travel memories?

[chuffed]

That was a wonderful comment about your Mum Dad and Gran being remembered,loved and how their spirit and their wisdom lives on in you and your life. One of your best postings ever.

I remember being on what must have been one of the very last steam trains from Ryde en route to Shanklin. Like any boisterous 8 year old I wanted to look out of the window. I was warned by my Mum that I would get smut in my eye. I promptly did,
 and remember yelling the whole train down as a result !

[PhilWakely]

As the expression goes.... Hindsight is a wonderful thing'.

I have two major regrets in life...........
- as a very young child, we were holidaying with my Auntie at Newport, Isle of Wight. Dad offered us children (x4) either a day at Carisbrooke Castle or a trip by train to Ventnor. Sadly, I was outvoted 3-1 and we went to the castle. I never did 'do' the line from Newport to Ventnor via Smallbrook Junction  (would have been 'change at St John's Road'); and

- a couple of years later, when another Auntie was staying with us in Pinhoe, dad decided we should have a day out in Plymouth. Although he had a large Rover 100, not all could fit in the car. So he asked that me and my brother catch the train from Pinhoe to Plymouth. At the ticket office, we were asked 'via Okehampton or via Newton Abbot'. Of course, both of us immediately chose Newton Abbot so that we could do some spotting as we passed both Newton Abbot and Laira sheds. I never did 'do' the full Southern route to Plymouth.

[SandTEngineer]

One lasting childhood memory I have (must have been about 1955) is my dad carrying me off a train at Euston, when walking down the platform and just passing the engine at the buffer stops the safety valve lifted and high pressure steam enveloped us.  Never did like steam engines for a long time after that...

Edit to add:  It must have had some lasting effect as I ended up working in the railway (S&T^▸ (Signalling and Telegraph)) industry for nearly 50 years now....

[John R]

One of my clearest youngest childhood memories is of my father taking me the short walk to watch the trains at Pengam Jn on the main line just east of Cardiff (no doubt to get me out from under my mother's feet for an hour). It was great as you could tell when a train was imminent because of the semaphore signalling. Then one day we turned up and the box and all the signals had been swept away, with just a few colour light signals that we soon learned were no help at all. I think we stopped going soon after that, but I never forgot the sense of disappointment we both had when we turned up that day.

[bradshaw]

Around 1950 we were living in Chippenham when my father took me up to see Trains at the station. I recall seeing a train which was not hauled by a steam engine. This, I feel, must have been the gas turbine locomotives recently introduced. We lived in view of the viaduct to the west of the station.

[ellendune]

Where was station depicted in the photograph?

[grahame]

Where was station depicted in the photograph?

It's Ventnor, with St Boniface Down rising high behind it and the railway burrowing through.

[LiskeardRich]

I'm a fair bit younger but I recall my grandad taking me on a train trip most dry Saturdays in winter months (it must have been winter as summer was cricket season). It would normally involve a walk between stations as he's an if walker.
I recall walking st Germans to Looe as a young child- about 12 miles. And lesser walks like gunnislake to calstock, and st Ives to Lelant are vivid in memory.
My grandad despite being late 70s still does 20 miles plus walks a few times a month- he now lives in Crete.
He has hundreds of railway books from steam and early diesel days through to the 80s.

Although I don't remember details as well as my trips with my grandad, my gran used to take us on bus trips in school holidays when we stayed with her. Always on a Tuesday (pension day maybe?)  from her home in Penryn to either Truro or Penzance back when it was Bristol VRs. Maybe why I have an enthusiasm to VRs to this day...next weekend I'm travelling with some friends to Bournemouth bus rally on Saturday and southsea in Sunday on an open top VR.

[trainer]

My earliest years were spent in Highbridge and walks to the station were frequent as we had no car.  What a contrast with today's sad (and re-named) bare platforms.  There were buildings in use on both the ex-GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) and ex-S&D^▸ (Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway) stations and although the passenger service to Burnham was no longer running, goods traffic crossed on the level from the S&D towards Highbridge Wharf and I can remember the excitement of seeing that rare moment.  There was a level crossing across Church Street (the A38) a few yards from our house which often caused extra hold-ups in summer Saturdays and I loved looking up into the signal box next to the crossing when the signalman (as it was in those days) turned the big wheel to operate the gates.

The station was next to the cattle market and the activity in that part of town is now but a distant memory, and the pigeons in crates being taken for racing merely flutter in the mind now.

There is (was?) an excellent model of Highbridge Station in the S&D museum at Washford and from what I recall, it is very accurate.

I strongly suspect that on one of the trips to the station I caught a bug somehow the effects of which have yet to wear off since I spend so much time thinking about trains.    No complaints though - it could have been pigeon fancying.

[JayMac]

Aged around 5 or 6, trainspotting at Taunton with my uncle, being lifted into the cab of Class 47, and allowed to toot the horn.

[chuffed]

Aged around 5 or 6, trainspotting at Taunton with my uncle, being lifted into the cab of Class 47, and allowed to toot the horn.

...with the protuberant proboscis no doubt !

[Chris from Nailsea]

I do remember being carried by my father down a railway platform in Plymouth to see a new train.  I was introduced to the driver, who wore a black cap and gave me an enamelled badge of a diesel train.

Looking back now, I must have been aged 3 or 4 then, so it would have been 1962 / 3.  The Plymouth railway station would have been North Road then, I think.  And that badge (which I sadly no longer have) was tiny and metal - the last thing anyone should give to a toddler! 

[stuving]

I don't have many clear memories of early childhood; I just don't have that good a memory. Nonetheless, I know that the first big train journey I went on was via the 6:55 p.m. sleeper from Kings Cross to Aberdeen (the Aberdonian) on 12th August 1950. That arrived after 7:00 a.m., and I don't think it was slowed down on purpose - it just took that long.

In this case I wouldn't remember anyway, being only a few months old at the time. Obviously we must have got the Kings Cross from Greenford (or possibly Sudbury Hill), but I don't remember how, even from later holiday travel to Aberdeen. Dad's diaries mention car hire, but not where to (and note that in the 1950s that's not self-drive).

Most of our clothes would go on ahead in a big trunk, but two (later three) small kids plus the rest of the luggage would still be a bit much to get to the station. Big stations had porters, of course, but if we went by tube there's never been any such help to get up to Kings Cross, has there?

I do remember those 3rd class (2nd class from 1956, though Dad still wrote 3rd) sleepers ... the bunks that were lowered for the night, and the little ladder to reach them ... that blue/purple night light, that was always on. And there was an oddly dead acoustic - though I think that must be down to the noise of the train and the hushed voices.

One train I do remember from early on was the push'n'pull from Greenford to Ealing Broadway. We didn't use it very often, but would often see it when taking the Central Line into London.

And when we were on holiday in Scotland at, my Grandma's, there was a gate at the end of the hen-run that led onto the railway line south of Inverurie station. We did go out there, though I think only on Sundays, not that the service was much less than other days then. And the trains I remember there (apart from the battery-electric unit from Deeside going for servicing) contained sad little tank engines being hauled off  rusting in twos and threes to be scrapped in Inverurie works.

[stuving]

While we're on the nostalgia trail, I found this (while looking for something else, obviously).

Someone appears to have transcribed the whole of the "Railway Wonders of the World" partwork, with pictures, onto the site. Full of stuff which now looks surprisingly modern, that of course being the idea.

Not relevant to this thread, of course, unless there is a forum member whose memory does reach back to 1936.