RAILWAY LINES… AND 500 LINES!
September and starting secondary school alongside Downfield Crossing halt on the Gloucester line couldn’t come quickly enough for me. In the summer holidays my parents, Welsh grandmother and I had been to London for a few days for a holiday and I had visited many large stations and been introduced to classes of locomotives that I had only seen in magazines and the books published by Ian Allan. We had travelled up to London on the Monday morning ‘Cheltenham Spa Express’, halled by ‘Castle’ No. 5071 Spitfire, with help up Sapperton bank on this occasion from No. 5907 Marble Hall, which was detached at Kemble. For the whole journey I stood in the corridor glued to the window, notebook in hand and feverishly recording as many numbers as I could – and missing many more.
The very basic guest house was almost opposite Paddington station and every evening my father and I would go over to see the evening arrivals. My collection of Western Region numbers grew rapidly, especially the ‘Kings’ and ‘Castles’ that dominated the scene. In those steam days of the 1950s, it was quite a sight even though gas turbine No. 18000 noisily appeared at the buffers on one of the evenings next to an immaculate No. 6015 I also visited Kings’ Cross, Euston and Victoria, where I acquired a selection
