Daft Old Duffer is back with his weekly column. Ed
Those of you who followed the TV series about the Stobbard truck empire earlier in the year will have seen the programme devoted to the folk who roamed the country carefully noting down the numbers of all the lorries they see. Perhaps you thought, ‘what a nerdy lot they were,’ using their spare time in such a way.
Well, not me.
Once such a nerd
You see I was once such a nerd. Only for me the ‘lorries’ of the time were railway locomotives. I began collecting ‘train’ numbers at quite an early age. From eight or nine I spent much of my spare time cycling down to the nearby railway station and there spending happy hours with my Woolies’ notebook and stub of pencil, patiently waiting for the next steamer to chug and crank and whistle along.
Eventually, however, I realised the same locomotives were appearing over and over. I had all the numbers underlined in my Ian Allen book, LNER section and there simply was not going to be any ‘strangers’. And certainly no ‘Namers’ paying me a visit.
Liverpool Street Locomotives
Then, one happy evening, one of the older in our little group sneered at me for not knowing that the home where the locomotives lived was called Liverpool Street, situated somewhere deep in the heart of that awesome place, London.
My heart leaped, for one of the trolleybus routes that passed the end of my road bore that very name on it’s destination blind, alongside the route number I can still recall. 659.
The very next Saturday, I filled an empty lemonade bottle with water, shoved a brace of jam sandwiches in a paper bag, and set off for the bus stop. In my pocket just enough pennies for the fare there and, hopefully back again.
My new stamping ground
Liverpool Street Station was an awesome heaven. So much so, that for a long time I expected at any moment to be turfed out by some irate official on the usual grounds back then – kids not allowed.
But no one did and soon enough Liverpool Street, home of dozens of platforms leading to magical destinations, of locomotives that dwarfed my homeground ‘tankers’ and even of great sleek monsters important enough to bear grand names, became my weekend stamping ground.
Even London Termini have their quiet moments though. And on one such I decided to take a look in the streets outside.
And saw a bus entitled ‘Waterloo’. The terminus, I knew, for those alien, strangely wonderful, Southern Railway ‘Streamliners’.
Divided loyalties
So I began to divide my loyalties, shuttling from one to the other. Until someone mentioned Kings Cross and I discovered the Underground – and Euston, and Marylebone, and Paddington and Victoria.
And without realising became, at the age of nine, a hardened traveller, roaming London without fear of getting lost, knowing that safety, if needed, was only a bus stop or tube station away. Of course, as I got older and entered the worlds of the Grammar School and Engineering Apprenticeship more important matters occupied my mind. Rugby and girls mainly.
But the bug lived on, deep inside, and I often took a Saturday bus into some part of the city and spent the day just wandering, just looking.
A life on the seas
Then, when I was not quite twenty one, apprenticeship completed, I went to Leadenhall Street, where all the shipping companies lived, entered the first building with the word ‘Shipping’ above the door, and told the first person to accost me that I wanted to join the Merchant Marine.
And a few weeks later was roaming New York – a doddle after London – while I waited to join the vessel that would take me around the world, and from which I would wander Baltimore and San Francisco, Manilla and Hong Kong, Singapore and Alexandria, Haifa and Algiers.
All with the assurance that getting lost didn’t matter, not understanding street signs didn’t matter, not talking the local tongue didn’t matter.
For after your adventure you’ll always get back somehow.
Thanks to the nerdy notion I had that roaming about collecting engine numbers was a worthwhile thing to do.
Image: Public Energy under CC BY 2.0
