Chapter 6
Trains

Boys of all ages from the cradle to the grave are fascinated by the sight, sound and smell of steam locomotives. Whether it is the chance to get dirty or the naked power visible in crank and connecting rod, piston and valve gear that attracts could provide the basis for many a year's discussions.

For those of us who lived on the South Coast there was not the diversity of steam power that could be seen in the West and North country or the Midlands. The legacy of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway was the three-rail electric system. But just outside Brighton Station were the marshalling yards with their small steam shunting locomotives - the railway equivalent of John Mansfield's 'Dirty British Coaster with a Salt-caked Smoke Stack'. Or departing from one of the west-bound platforms was the train bound for Horsham that the boys of Steyning Grammar School and Christ's Hospital rode. When in later years we waited for it to depart from Shoreham station it seemed already that the age of steam had passed - an age of grime and exploitation - an anachronism in our bright new world. Now we travel to distant parts to see, hear and smell those workhorses of another age. Then we travelled to Worthing High Schools in clean yet somehow neglected electric trains past the Lancing Carriage Works where long lines of coaches awaited their turn to go through the cleaning sheds.

Departing from the Brighton platforms were trains bound for exotic West Country destinations - Taunton, Penzance and Ilfracombe. These were not driven by the familiar electric motors but the romantic steam locomotives. It is recognised by those in the know that those of the Southern Region were among the finest ever built. They do not have the romance of the Mallard, that record holding A4 Pacific or the might of the Standard 9 class of which Evening Star is the example supreme, being the last steam locomotive built for British railways¹. What they encompassed was experimentation and design. None were more streamlined than the Merchant Navy class. None were more functional and devoid of charm than the utilitarian Q-1 class, yet this stark austerity gave it character.

Two names for ever connected with that period were REL Maunsell and OV Bulleid, in their respective generations the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Southern Region.

I take my wife to a hydrotherapy pool. The owners have an impressive collection of pictures of the railway of my childhood: pictures painted to provide illustrative plates in those railway books that satisfy the need to collect memorabilia: pictures now adorning the calendars of those whose pinups are the locomotives of the Princess and other classes. If I am to allow myself the luxury and sin of covetousness then it is these artefacts that are my undoing. One picture in particular shows Brighton station from the north, and there is the end of platform 2 from which we delighted to view the giants of steam: to record their number or name: to use precious photographic film to preserve for posterity their final years of glory. Alas none of my photos have survived.

I only rode the Brighton Belle once - that electric Pullman train that is still in 1992 the subject of letters in the Guardian newspaper because of the excellence of its legendary breakfasts. But I often saw her coaches in the marshalling yards outside Brighton when I stood on the bridge at the top of Millers Road. As a child I automatically assumed that the car named Audrey was so called in honour of my mother. Later, as a civil engineer I would be instrumental in rebuilding that first bridge under which you pass as you head for London - but that is another story.

On the west side of the railway there are several roads that are many feet higher than it is. In the garden of one house there was an 'O' gauge model railway set in concrete and with tunnels through which the trains could pass. Although the rails always looked shiny as if recently used, I never did see any trains either in action or at rest nor any people in the garden; it remains one of life's mysteries.

I think it was my tenth birthday when my father asked me what I most wanted as a present. My mind was already made up. I desired a train set.

I had played with the loco that had been his as a child. It was powered by steam, fuelled by methylated spirits, but was becoming an increasing fire hazard because we could no longer obtain wicks, and those we made did not fit properly. This gave it the unfortunate habit of dribbling a trail of burning meths as it ran across the linoleum. Fortunately it did not have the power to run across the carpet, or I fear it would have ignited that if we had not given up the attempt so easily. I already had an 'O' gauge tinplate clockwork set with its unrealistic locomotive and short four wheeled carriages (later I would see pictures of the 19th century predecessors of our trains in books and be surprised at their crudity - these were reasonable representations), but what I now wanted was an electric train set with realistic features in miniature. I did not want a Hornby set like some of my friends. They were again tin-plate with cab details painted in - however finely. The Triang set I wanted was moulded plastic with such minute details in relief and corridor composite coaches in red and cream, one with an integral guard's compartment. The locomotive was a model of the sleek 'Princess Royal' class named 'Princess Elizabeth' - so pertinent at that time as our new Queen prepared for her reign.

My parents agreed that I could invest some of my savings stamps and certificates to make up the difference between what they considered to be a reasonable gift and the ten pounds or so the set cost. (In contrast, my first real car in 1961 cost me £3/10s.) So it was an extremely happy boy who returned with his father from Gamleys toy shop one day clutching a large box containing his heart's desire. Over the next five or six years I would spend my pocket money on further purchases and spend hours assembling kits to extend the line or the range of rolling stock. When my brother was stationed in Germany for his National Service he returned one time with a very solid dye-cast 0-6-0 Western Region Pannier tank. I conducted experiments and found that it could haul a massive 14 lbs without wheel slip.

I gave the set to my nephews some years later, but not before it had given me enormous pleasure. I even took it to the church hall where we held an exhibition of the hobbies indulged by the youth club. A friend and I spent a considerable time planning the layout that combined our two sets.

When we bought the set it came with a box that held two large lantern batteries and had an on/off/forward/reverse switch. This provided the electricity that was transmitted through the rails and picked up via the driving wheels of the locomotive. Unlike some models at that time there were no ugly pick-up studs protruding from the lines of the engine; neither was there a third rail stuck between the others like an underground train. And the plastic support for the rails was moulded realistically to represent the ballast. However, it became clear that batteries would eat all my pocket money and speed controllers were expensive, so another plan was called for. My father and I decided that a project for winter evenings would be to build a transformer and speed control box. For a few pounds we designed and built a box that provided two independently switched circuits for the trains and additional circuits to provide lighting on the stations and buildings that we built from kits or our own imagination. The design was perfect except for one point we overlooked. It was dangerous. The main switch on the device was one of those two pin switched sockets you could attach to the wall but instead of the switch controlling what electricity came out of the socket, we wired it so that it controlled what came in via an extension lead that plugged into a real wall socket. This meant that the pins on the plug at the controller end were exposed and live until they were pushed all the way home. On several occasions I gave myself electric shocks as I connected the device to the wall in the wrong order. That may be one of the influences on my personality to this day!