Great Western Coffee Shop

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?

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 !

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.

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) industry for nearly 50 years now.... ::) ;D

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.

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.

Where was station depicted in the photograph?

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

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.

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 and ex-S&D 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.  :D  No complaints though - it could have been pigeon fancying. ;D

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 !

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!  :o

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.

While we're on the nostalgia trail, I found this  (http://www.railwaywondersoftheworld.com/index.html)(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.

I rather think grahame's might, as I suspect he is a Time Lord - based on his previous incredibly detailed historic posts.  :P

I have three clear memories from my childhood.

The earliest is seeing a steam train skirting the park near where we lived on its way between Reading and Earley on the Southern line.

My first recollection of a train journey was going from Reading to Swansea to see my grandparents.  I can remember seeing the station signs at Cardiff Central with the name spelt out at the top of a lighting pole in a long case backlit by a fluorescent tube.

My other memory is travelling to South London to see a football match with my Dad at Charlton Athletic.  We were in a compartment with four other people and they together with my Dad were all smoking cigarettes or pipes.  I also remember the game ended a 1-1 draw!

I dimly recall going on a steam train from Ryde to Shanklin - must have been about 1963 or 4.  Don't remember much but the engine was black and the coaches green so must have been like this:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Ryde_Esp_8_64385_1.jpg)

Edited to fix link

Ah yes - 4 tracks down the pier (reduced to just one in use about 10 years ago), and coaches in a uniform livery not too far from GW green.   Mind, I though at the time that GWR colours were chocolate and cream ...

Coaches were of course Southern Green, This being Southern Railway territory.

I expect it was Cardiff General where you saw the illuminated signs.

Watching the trains at my grandmother's  garden in Woolston. The line was in a cutting from Woolston to Sholing and also quite a steep bank so the engines were coughing a bit Portsmouth bound. The headhunt for Woolston yard was there so you could watch the afternoon pick up goods shunting and taking the wagons off at tea time. The highlight of the day was the Brighton Plymouth coating down teh bank usually wth a WC/BB (unrebuilt of course)  although I did once see the last Brighton Atlantic on the train. The WC/Bb on the return didn't cough but huffed up the bank.

Then we moved to Slough and sitting with my Mother on the Down relief platform late afternoon and seeing a Didcot Saint on a Down Semi Fast.

Coping 5092 as my last Castle at Slough on one of the Swindon running in turns as it was mostly shedded West of  Swansea in the late 50s.

IIRC two tracks were for the trains to Ventnor etc whilst the other two tracks were for a tram shuttle up and down the pier (http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2658644)

As I understand things, there are effectively 3 separate piers side by side (although connected to each other).  When the last major repairs were needed to the road pier, there was a temporary pedestrian deck built on the tram pier.

Paul

Should never post after a long day at work - of course it was Cardiff General - and we travelled from Reading General...   ;D

Happy memories of childhood. For a Great Western Coffee Shop there appear to be a lot of members who come from Southern Region!

I grew up on Hayling Island, home of Stroudly Terriers(?). I cycled up the old railway line on Saturday, nothingmuch left at Hayling Island (the terminus) and remembered the wind at North Hayling (Halt). We lived the "wrong" side of the island so didn't use the Hayling Billy that much. I used to be sent with a bucket to get cockles and winkles from the old oyster beds, which would be combined with train watching. Also memories of the old wooden Hayling Bridge, with its railway toll collector. The weight limit on the bridge meant everybody on the single-decker bus walked across, except mothers with babes in arms, which was a bit breezy in winter! Interestingly another part of my youth was spent near Shoreham (Sussex) also a wooden bridge with a railway toll collector.

Train spotting from Hayling was mainly done at Havant, the main memory was being able to say all the stops on the Waterloo slow train, the semi-fast was obviously easier.

Trunks being sent separately; PLA (Passenger Luggage in Advance). The start of Saturday's cycle ride was Portsmouth Harbour, then round to The Still and West. Down the cobbled lane from there used to be the British Road Services quay for the Isle of Wight. All these peripheral functions went at about the same as Beeching I imagine.

PLA lasted until around 1981, as I too used it at the start of my spell at uni to get a trunk there and back, but could not by the end. I remember then thinking that it was a remarkably cheap way to get a trunk from A to B - they could have doubled the price and it would still have been worth it. It might not have been withdrawn as being uneconomic if they had.

I suspect the market for trunks rapidly dwindled thereafter. 

I'm a Southern boy too. In around 1965 my dad would take me to Surbiton to buy a Platform Ticket and watch the trains go through. The excitement of a steam-hauled service coming into earshot stays with me to today. At age 11, my birthday present was a trip on the Brighton Belle in its final weeks of service. Pullman lunch and all! It was a come-down to head home on a prosaic 4EPB. <sigh>

Another memory, and a question.

We used to visit relatives in Mid-Wales. After a trip from London via Shrewsbury, we used to change at Moat Lane Junction. I seem to remember that they used to bring steps to the carriage doors. Did part of the Cambrian Railway (?) have lower platforms, or is age playing tricks on the memory?

Moat Lane Junction was a station with no road access, I believe there was at one other like it somewhere in the north of England.

I think some still do ... you have Harrington humps at places like Aberdovey, don't you?

Wikipedia lists current stations:

Altnabreac railway station
Berney Arms railway station
Corrour railway station
Country Park Halt railway station
Dduallt railway station
Dovey Junction railway station
Middlewood railway station
Nant Gwernol railway station
Newton Dale Halt railway station
Rheidol Falls railway station
Rhiwfron railway station
Smallbrook Junction railway station
Snowdon

You may be thinking of Trent, which was intended as an interchange station and served no local community as such, apart from the close by Trent College boarding school.

Ah; the Still and West, spent many hours there in the mid-sixties while at Portsmouth College of Technology. Steam was still around, passing the Chemistry block during lectures. We had a science trip to the Science Museum, coming back on the newspaper train visa Eastleigh. Managed a footplate trip from Woking to Basingstoke, Bullied hauled.

1963. I'd be 6 years old. We lived in the village of Wookey in Somerset, and my kindergarten was in Priory Road in nearby Wells. Every week-day my mum would see me onto the bus and I'd travel on my own to Wells - aged 6, remember - and be met at the other end by my teacher at the school.

Except, I wasn't really on my own, since every single passenger on the bus knew me and looked out for me, and even the driver lived two doors up from us and his 14 year old daughter had been my babysitter for the past five years. And if Mum was a couple of minutes late, the bus would always wait.

But although travel related, that's not what I wanted to tell you about. For the S&D aficionados amongst you, my mentioning the words "Priory Road, Wells" up there would have immediately jumped out at you. Although the former S&D station in Priory Road had closed to passengers in 1951, goods traffic continued using the line right up until the late 1960s. Every Wednesday was half-day closing at the Kindergarten, but because there was no bus back to Wookey and beyond until later that afternoon, if the weather was good the teacher used to take us across the field at the back of the building to watch the engines on the turntables and working in the goods yard, and I saw the buildings being demolished, which is probably where my love of preserved railway architecture was born.

I was also fortunate enough to travel on the last scheduled service out of Tucker Street station (the other Wells station, which was on the GWR line) which closed to passengers on 9 September 1963; but although the memories remain vivid - not only of the train journey itself, but particularly of the machine dispensing chocolate on the platform, and the other machine that flattened and bent pennies for some godforsaken reason - no-one in my family had a camera until many years later, so sadly there's nothing to look back on from that time.

Surely you weren't actually bullied at Portsmouth, bradshaw?!?  :o ::) ;D

Do you not love automatic spell checkers

First train journeys Swindon Town to Southampton via MSWR middle  of the war. Vaguely remember a very full and standing journey and being passed down the corridor to the loo.

My grandmothers back garden  in Woolston backed onto the line hich is in deep cutting up to Shooling. there was also the headshunt for Woolston yard so I could watch the afternoon pick up goods shunting and taking the wagons away to Beavois yard. Didn't like the Q1s a bit scary!

As it was up hill Portsmouth bound trains coughed quite well. the other highlight was the Brighton Plymouths usually a WC/BB unrebuilt of course. they huffled up the hill. I did catch the last Brighton Atlantics on one.

Then to Slough and sitting on Down relief platform with my mother and seeing one of the last Didcot's Saints ( a Hall with big wheels) on a semi fast which stopped at Slough.

Early 50 s and my grandmother used to buy a weeks rail rover either WEst to Bournemouth or East along the coast to Portsmouth. I liked the Bournemouth best. Often travelled back via Ringwood,  othewise Bournemouth West and trainspotters delight of the pull back besides Bournemouth shed for Weymouth portion to come into the platform. Also did Winchester Chesil, Fawley branch.

Also did a long haul along the South Coast to have a week in Folkstone and watching the boat rains from the beach also RHDR.

I thought this looked familiar, is this meant to partially duplicate your previous reply on the 5th...   ;D

Paul

Paul mistake thought first post hadn't gone so repeated but added to.

I posted way back at reply #2 about hindsight and regrets.

However, I have no regrets about being led on by my older brother and both of us being naughty little schoolboys! I am not entirely certain of the year, but it was either 1963 or 1964. We lived a couple of miles from Exmouth Junction shed and on several occasions, I recollect cycling over to the shed and leaving our bikes unchained at the entrance. Then, walking in and sneaking passed the manager's office to spot whatever was on shed at the time before sneaking out again and cycling home.

On one such occasion, 34026 'Yes Tor' was in steam on one of the shed roads, complete with driver and fireman. My brother caught the attention of the driver and naturally asked 'Can we get on the footplate please?'. The answer was 'Yes' and we were duly helped up onto the (rather warm) footplate. Much of the conversation has been lost in the mists of time, but I can remember being asked if we wanted to stay on the footplate for a ride to Exeter Central as 34026 was just about to be sent there. Two very excited youngsters eagerly said 'Yes', oblivious to the consequences of being dropped at Exeter Central and having to make our own way home. Thankfully, brother - being four years older than me - had enough money (and sense!) for us to get the train back to Polsloe Bridge Halt and walk the few hundred yards to our bikes at Exmouth Junction.

Not sure how the driver and fireman fared, but nobody seemed to bat an eyelid at Central when we got off the footplate.

Stations without road access the most famous being Bala Junction which didn't appear in the public timetable so you left Bala before you arrived!

My earliest train travel memory was a trip from Bridgwater to Weston-Super -Mare when I was about 3 years old, with my mother and her mother.  The main memories are the (very shiny) green DMU arriving at Bridgwater and then manouvering the pram containing my younger brother off the train at Weston.

I'd been a railway enthusiast for ages before that, according to my mother, getting very excited by the diesel shunter that would cross from Bridgwater (WR) yard towards George Hooper's Timber yard (where Sainsbury's now is) and on to the docks.  My dad worked at Hoopers, so I'd often see this little shunter trip.

We later moved to Milverton, and I remember Saturday morning trips to go swimming (actually, near drowning  ;D)  in James Street Baths, Taunton, with my dad, whose Royal Marines style swimming lessons were not child-friendly.  I remember spending most journeys standing on the plates of the gangway connections between two coaches, riding them up and down as they would buck quite wildly (these were not buck-eye coupled coaches!)  Very happy days, although I still can't swim very well.

Having conferred with my father, whose memory is excellent (unlike my own rather hazy version), it would in fact have been 1961 / 2.  We were living in Torquay then (without a car in those days), and we would have travelled by train from there via Newton Abbot to Plymouth North Road (well, I got that bit right!) to visit my grandparents in Plymstock.  My father has some recollection of leaving my mother at the exit of the station, with a load of luggage, while he carried me down the platform to meet that train driver.  ;D

My father’s family were from Northern Ireland.  Back in the early fifties, when I was about 5 or 6, I remember us catching the Ulster Express from Rugby to Heysham, a trip we did several times.  We’d have dinner in the Restaurant Car – I remember the cutlery rattling and a large piece of white fish in a funny tasting (as I thought at the time) sauce.

I remember boarding the Ulster Prince (was the other boat called the Ulster Monarch?) at Heysham, having a cabin with no windows, and then getting up early in the morning to be on deck as we sailed up Belfast Loch Lough.

edit for correct spelling of Lough - thanks to CyclingSid 

Can somebody remind me of the route of the Brighton to Plymouth? Went to Plymouth a couple of times on it, I presume I would have got on at Havant (?).
Also remember sailing up Belfast Lough early one morning, on a Royal Fleet Auxiliary (that didn't have a good trip to the Falklands).

As far as I can recall it was Brighton, Fareham, Southampton, Salisbury, Exeter, Okehampton, Plymouth. Used to see it through Crewkerne in the early 1960s

I remember this running through the 1980's on Saturdays only. The route was Brighton - Chichester - Havant - Fareham - Southampton - Salisbury - Exeter St Davids

The usual traction was a single class 33 "Crompton" diesel locomotive but on Summer Saturdays it was often double-headed as extra coaching stock was added to the formation. On a few odd occasions there was even a relief train which ran a few minutes before it.

Didn't it run with Hastings Diesel units at one time, when they were spare on Saturdays from commuter duties?

Yes, it did (https://www.flickr.com/photos/pwakely/5764252617/in/album-72157626816202076/), in the early 70's. I recall one year (1971 IIRC) when mum and dad took us on a camping holiday in the New Forest. I was in my mid-teens and wanted to get back to Exeter early to play cricket. I pleaded with dad that I could travel back to Exeter on the train from Brockenhurst, changing trains just once - at Southampton. To my great surprise, he agreed and I was able to travel on this service.

My earliest memories of the 'Brighton' were in the mid-60s when Warships ruled the Mule services. The Summer Saturdays Only 'Brighton' saw the introduction of double-headed Cromptons and I remember spending number of Summer Saturday lunchtimes in Exwick Playing Fields (opposite Exeter St Davids) waiting for the pair of D65xx on the 'Brighton' to appear out of the tunnel and come down the bank from Central

It certainly doesn't sound like something that could happen now. But there is an Ian McEwan novel, written and set in the 1990s, in which the hero hitches a lift in the cab of a goods train (but is set down at or very near a level crossing rather than a station). And in real life, I have a friend who was given a lift in the cab of a XC Voyager because the driver spotted her stowing her unusual bike away (I think she must have boarded during a driver changeover at BHM).

In the time before the closure of the Bridport branch a prospective teacher was travelling to Bridport for an interview at Colfox School. When the guard found out he arranged to drop him off at Bradpole Crossing, as it was nearer the school.
Unbeknown to him the head teacher had driven to the station to pick him up; however he still got the job and told me the story some years later when I was working there