Trainspotting

I’ve done quite a lot of travelling today. First thing, I went to Dawlish and Dawlish Warren in Devon. For a pleasant few minutes, I watched the trains rush by the seaside railway lines. Later, I moved up north to the Ribblehead viaduct in the Yorkshire Dales. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see it properly because the webcam wasn’t working.

Some months ago, with too much time on my hands, I invested in a year’s membership of a webcam site, specifically a railway webcam site. It’s been money well spent, too, because it’s the nearest I will be getting to real places for a good while. I am coming up with a plan to visit trainspotting sights when this is all over.™ In fact, I’m going to do the lot.

In the summer of 1978, appalled that England had not qualified for the World Cup, an old pal and I bought what was known as a RailRover ticket, which gave us seven days access to the entire rail network of Britain, carefully avoiding matches. We used it to good effect, criss crossing the country several times, visiting Penzance, Fishguard, Thurso, Aberdeen, London, Hastings and many places in between. We didn’t see much other than from the train window but I knew one day I would pay closer attention. Nearly 43 years on, that time has arrived.

I am not sure I can manage 4000 miles in seven days, as we did then, but I’ll do it differently now. Instead of sleeping overnight on trains – you could do that in 1978 – I’m going to stop everywhere. Here are some of the places:

• I am going to Shap in Cumbria. I will find some places to watch the trains swishing up the summit on the way to Scotland. Sadly, the glorious isolation of that area has been wrecked by the 24 hour rumble of the M6 but the views are still exceptional and it remains a marvel of engineering.
• I’ll go to Thurso and actually explore the place, making a trip to John O Groats. All we did in 1978 was visit what appeared to be a whisky bar. Mind you, At Aberdeen, we didn’t even leave the train.
• Loads of places in Devon, including all the banks of Rattery, Hemerdon and Dainton. I have this thing about railway gradients and tunnels. Dainton has both.
• Dundee is a certainty. I will go to the legendary Tay Bridge, which replaced Sir Thomas Bouch’s first bridge, which collapsed into the river in 1879, killing an estimated 79 people.
• Beattock. Yes, yes, yes: another bloody great railway gradient next to another bloody motorway.

That’s just some of the places. The point is that I need to do a few things after lockdown because so much time has been lost and time is running out.

in the meantime, I’m off to Crewe for a while to watch the sleeper arrive from Euston. It’s not quite the same thing but it will have to do for now.