There are things about train spotting that I have enjoyed, but it’s not a passion. This has already given me an idea for another blog post on the theme of how I confuse people so that they end up saying “But I thought you liked [this thing]?”
So this is just a straightforward list of what I enjoyed about going train spotting with my dad and his other train spotter friend in the late 1970s.
- The excitement of seeing rare trains. For me this wasn’t any of the old steam engines but simply a type of diesel-electric train that didn’t come through our local station very often.
- Learning how to identify the different types of diesel-electric train, and having this confirmed by reading the “Class number” of the train as it passed.
- The sensory joy of underlining numbers in “Motive Power” in ballpoint pen, with a ruler.
- The smell of vending machine coffee on my fingers, the Nestle Crunch bar I always had with the coffee.
- The throbbing of the engines as they pulled away
- The smell of hot brakes on the stone train (i.e. the train that carried stone & which had very hot brakes because it had stopped at the station carrying tonnes and tonnes of stone)
- The silence of distant lights in the cold, dark, evening
You’ll probably notice that a lot of this is about sensory things. I once went to Crewe (UK train spotter central) to see lots of trains parked up in a shed / museum, and was quite underwhelmed because they weren’t moving (making noise, smells etc).
So yes, I’ve enjoyed aspects of train spotting and there is a lot of read-across about categorising things that appears in my other hobbies, but I wouldn’t call myself a train spotter.
Alan By The Sea 