An interest in railways

My home in my early years overlooked two railway lines, the former Great Central and London and North Eastern Railway line between London Marylebone and Sheffield and the Midland and London Midland and Scottish Railway between London St Pancras and Leeds.  From our house I could see Tapton Junction where the former Midland line to Sheffield and Rotherham diverted from the 'old road' direct to Rotherham.  George Stephenson had lived at Tapton House.

My father was interested in earlier transport links, turnpikes and canals, and was awarded a Ph.D. by Sheffield University for a thesis on turnpikes and canals in and around Sheffield and North Derbyshire. He encouraged me to take an interest in railways from an historical perspective and also the current railway scene. 

My knowledge of the geography of the United Kingdom was gained through looking at railway timetables and maps. I developed an understanding of  goods and mineral traffic flows and how they served industry.  Watching trains go by was of secondary interest and I never bothered to collect numbers.  However I was interested in why, where I lived, the former LMS line was always busy whilst trains  were few and far between on the former LNER line.  Why were two competing lines built between Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester and London? 

Often I played with friends by the side of the Chesterfield Canal close to the lines of the two railway companies which had been nationalised in 1947 and named 'British Railways'.  We would see the 'Devonian' heading for Birmingham, Bristol and Torquay, the 'Waverley Express' for Leeds, Carlisle and Edinburgh and the 'Thames-Clyde Express' also for Carlisle and thence to Glasgow.  In those days, before the advent of motorways, these far away places existed in our imagination. What were they like?  No Internet or Google maps to refer to.

The south and the 'electric' trains of the Southern Region were a foreign land to us and all we knew about them was encapsulated in the London to Brighton in Four Minutes film.

We lived in a more innocent age, didn't watch much television, no computer games to play, no fear of strangers. The pace of life was slower and we didn't have washing machines, cars, supermarkets and all the other boons to modern day living.  On the hand there was washing day drudgery, frequent visits to the shops, poor housing and many people worked in dangerous industries.

In my lifetime scientific knowledge and new technology has wrought hugely beneficial changes to our society, but I am thankful for the experiences of my childhood.