Having spent time recently updating my train and railway database information from various notebooks and occasionally the odd scrap of paper onto my laptop computer, in a moment of nostalgia I started to look back over the years at all the data I had accumulated and wondered if I could remember why or even when it was that I became a train spotter or as others may sometimes define it, an Anorak.
I grew up in Kent, a part of the country that was served by that division of the Southern Railway that ran from London down to the South East with the London Terminus being Waterloo and Charing Cross, or to be more geographically correct they are the other way around, and at the other end to such places as Ashford, Chatham Hastings and Folkstone, part of the line in fact now covered by High Speed One for the London - Channel Tunnel and Paris or Brussels. The playground of the school I attended during those pre eleven plus and more importantly pre Beeching days, backed onto a part of the railway line that formed sections of the goods yard for Tonbridge Station, the only barrier between our playground and us infants and the goods yard being a single chain link fence about three feet high.
It did not take long for some of us boys to realise that if we stood at the fence during playtime and waved at the drivers and firemen on the engines, as they moved into or out of the goods yard, as often as not they would wave back and some would even sound the whistle as in clouds of dirty black steam they shunted past us. So it was only a very short progression from this to some of us starting to note the engine numbers and later the engine types down in pages torn from the back of our school exercise books.
I am not sure exactly when how or even by whom it was decided to organise a more formal group, it may have been Phil Walker, who later went on to work for British Railway as a station porter at Tonbridge, but a group was formed and we called ourselves I now recall, somewhat grandly, The Tonbridge Spotters. So it was that some 52 years ago now I first officially changed from a boy who occasionally waved at passing trains to become a fully fledged member of The Tonbridge Spotters, a group of like minded schoolboys, and more importantly friends, when we all failed the eleven plus exams and collectively left primary school and headed off to the local secondary modern, were to stay together until 1964 when we all left school aged 15 and went to make our own way in the world.
We as a group seemed to vary in membership numbers over the years, some would leave the group and some would join as we all ventured unsteadily through the onset of puberty, discovering the opposite sex and being teenagers during the swinging sixties. The one common bond and interest being trains. The Tonbridge Spotters outings were confined mainly to weekends, school holidays or vary occasionally those long warm summer evenings, but outings we did have and perhaps by today's standards they may not have been very adventurous they were enjoyable.
The outings were often planned during school dinner times in a corner of the bike shed or if raining in the school library and with what we thought to be military precision. They varied from sometimes nothing more simple than all meeting up at Tonbridge station, buying a platform ticket, or sometimes not buying a platform ticket, and spending the day sat at the end of a platform pencil and notebook in hand. Occasionally though the outings saw us range further afield, sometimes we would ride our bikes to some distant station and very occasionally, when our pocket money would allow, we would travel to London to spend a day around some of the engine sheds like Nine Elms, sadly now long gone and the area is a housing estate.
One abiding memory I have to this day of those adventures was the snacks or lunch packs our mothers would prepare for us. Without fail and to a boy they would consist of a couple of sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper the fillings would invariably be either cheese, spam, paste or egg. Also included would be, if lucky, a bag of crisps, Smiths with the small blue bag of salt, in those far off days crisps did not come in flavours just plain, if crisps were not included then perhaps a hard boiled egg would be added, this would be accompanied by a thermos flask of tea to wash it all down, the whole epicurean delight being carried in a duffle bag over the shoulder, I wonder now if they still make duffle bags.
Even as comparatively young as we were we always adopted the practice of opening all our sandwich boxes and laying them before us and by sharing we told ourselves that it helped maintain a varied diet. From time to time mishaps occurred, occasionally and without thinking one of us would drop our bag to the ground and then hear a slight clinking sound as the glass inner liner of the thermos flask shattered and the unfortunate individual watched as slowly the brown hot liquid seeped out of the bag to form a puddle on the ground, normally this was greeted by a roar of laughter from the rest of us but we would always end up sharing so the worst thing that would happen was that the individual would have to go home and face his mum and own up that he had broken yet another thermos flask. When this happened to me, as it did from time to time, I was always given the lecture about carelessness, and asked in a very stern voice did I know how much these things cost and just to teach me a lesson my pocket money would be diverted the very next week to offset the cost of a replacement. It never was and by the next weeks outing of The Tonbridge Spotters I would always have a new flask for carrying my tea.
Of all of the locomotive types or Class as they are correctly known that populated the Southern Railway during those days we members of The Tonbridge Spotters were impressed that we had our own locomotive class. The Southern Railway V [Schools] Class which was loosely based upon combination of both the Nelson and King Artur Class it was to be the last purpose built heavy express steam locomotive to be designed with a wheel arrangement of 4-4-0. The Schools were designed for no other reason than to run on the Southern Railway where the tunnels were narrow and the turntables at the engine sheds particularly between Tonbridge and Hastings were small, the Schools, I remember we had decided, were our locomotive.
A total of forty of these engines were built between 1930 and 35 and though formerly titled as V Class 4-4-0 they gained their name of Schools Class due to all being named after Public Schools. The Class started to be withdrawn from 1963 and by 1964 they had all gone from public mainline use. Of the forty built only three now remain in private ownership and in preservation, 30925 Cheltenham is owned by the National Railway Collection, 30928 is currently located as a static display at Sheffield Park and the last 30926 Repton is the only Schools Class at present still running and carrying fare paying passengers, this on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.
I live now in the North East, however I am I suppose still a member of The Tonbridge Spotters, I do not ever recall us being formally disbanded we just left school and went our own way, perhaps who knows I may be the sole remaining member of The Tonbridge Spotters. I see now by referring to my various notes and records that though I have seen 30926 Repton many times the first recorded spotting by me was at Ashford on 26 August 1957 and the last time I saw her was 1 July 2008 when I travelled as a passenger on her from Grosmont to Pickering on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway whilst on a day visit, an interval of 51 years.
