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My name is Ken Jacobs and my interest in train spotting started in a sort of round-a-bout way back in the first half of the 1950’s, when I was a little lad in Hackney in the East End of London.
My elder brother, Geoff, took me by train from Clapton Station to Liverpool Street Station, because he hoped to get to see some of the last remaining STL buses that were still in service with London Transport.
After leaving the train, we headed for the exit which would take us out to Bishopsgate (Ermine Street). Anyone who knows Liverpool St. Station will know that the best way to this exit is via the elevated walk way which extends from one end of the station to the other and must be at least 25 feet above the concourse. It was while I was doing this walk that, with the help of Geoff, I looked over the top, and fell in love with the Smokey atmosphere that befell me, in the form of wall to wall steam locos of all shapes and sizes and colours. Yes, we did see an STL into the bargain as well.
The area that we lived in was roughly between two lines to and from Liverpool Street. One was the suburban line out to Enfield and the Lea Valley side of Hertford to places like Broxbourne. The other was the suburban line to Chingford and also the East Coast main line to the far flung corners of Suffolk, Norfolk and Lincolnshire. Now, whenever my brother heard the distinctive whistle of a “Brit”, he would grab me and run me as fast as my little legs would carry me up the road to the railway cutting between Clapton Station and Hackney Downs Station, in the appropriately named, Love Lane, where we would watch the steaming giant go thundering through.
Another momentous trip out with Geoff a couple of years later was a 73 bus ride from Stoke Newington Common to Kings Cross. We arrived to find, what my brother called a “Streak” had just arrived with a train from up north. We went onto the platform and Geoff started to talk to the driver who was still sitting in the cab with the fireman next to him, shovelling coal into a blazing furnace. The next thing I knew we were up on the footplate and the fireman was offering me an empty shovel. Being a little naive, I was a bit unsure as to what he wanted me to do with it, but I soon found out when he lifted this heavy great thing and guided it towards a huge pile of coal in the tender. I think I managed to get about two pieces on it which I heaved round and shoved into the rather hot hole underneath a load of dials, handles and levers. I did note that the fireman was holding rather tightly onto the end of the handle, I can’t think why? The next thing I knew was when the driver sounded the whistle and we began to move slowly along the platform. He stopped at the other end and said that this was our stop. We both climbed down the steps then waved to the crew as they moved away. The number on this “streak” was 60022 and was named the “Mallard”. It wasn’t until a few years later that I learnt the significance of this particular loco.
Towards the last years of the 1950’s I began to go train spotting with a mate of mine, Kenny Hill, from the same council estate as me, he had a love of the Western Region which meant quite a few visits to Paddington Station. We still managed many days out at places like Kings Cross and it’s next door neighbour, St. Pancras then a ten minute walk along Euston Road to Euston Station.
We didn’t forget the Southern Region. We would go off to Waterloo Station, stay there for a couple of hours then jump on the Underground to Clapham Junction, which was said to be one of the busiest junctions in the world, where we would spend the rest of the day.
It should be remembered here that I was only about ten or eleven years old at this time and still at junior school. Can you imagine children in this day and age going gallivanting, not only around London, but all over the country on Ian Allen trips on their own or even with a best mate.
A bike ride away from home was one of the local spotting places we enjoyed going to, it was a place called Temple Mills which boasted one of the largest shunting yards in Europe. Some of the lines were used by Midland Region trains as well as the Eastern which made for some very interesting and obscure locos through there. Another jump into our saddles and we were off to Finsbury park, through the main gates then up to the train spotters purpose built viewing area. From here you had a great view of the trains steaming through the cutting at speed, to and from Kings Cross.
On one of the Ian Allen trips, we went up north and stopped off at, among other places Immingham, it was here that I saw my one and only BR tram then on to Frodingham. I was not to know it then, that forty three years later I would move up here to live, along with my wife Jean, in Winteringham.
I used to go on organised trips with Kenny to some of the big and small sheds, these included places like Crewe, Doncaster and Swindon to name but a few and many of the sheds around London. The only shed that I used to bunk into on a fairly regular basis was Stratford Works in East London and this was usually on a Sunday when there was least chance of getting caught. It was here, when electrification began to take a hold, that I saw the sad sight of row upon row of steam locos, waiting to be scrapped.
I suppose that this was the beginning of the end for me and train spotting, for as more and more diesels and electrics were introduced, so the romance of seeing these huge hissing and steaming monsters tearing along their tracks no more, was too much to bear.
I suppose that deep down I am still that young train spotter at heart, as I still enjoy a trip out to the railway preservation societies and museums around the country, and when a steam loco appears on the telly, out comes my last bought old but trusty Ian Allen Combined Volume numbers book of 1960, to see whether in another era long passed, if I had spotted that particular one.
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