Trainspotters

Today's post, 28th March 2021, features another jigsaw from Gibsons promoting the superb artwork of David Noble, one of the Guild of Railway Artists' professionals. This is a brilliant choice by Gibsons for a jigsaw puzzle - serving as a nostalgic glimpse into my youth, and that of many other steam era veterans. An interesting story on the BBC News website of January 2008 describes “The world’s first trainspotter” as probably a 14-year-old boy from County Durham, John Backhouse. John visited the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825 and wrote a letter to his sisters in London describing the event. He also included a drawing of the train with his text. The letter with drawing is part of the National Railway Museum collection in York.

Spotters at Doncaster is a 1000-piece jigsaw packaged in a small, “Planet Friendly Box” (Gibsons' description). In BR days, two ex-LNER main line locomotives are depicted at Doncaster Station on a wet day. ‘A4’ class 4-6-2, No.60025 Falcon, taking on water at the head of a rake of crimson passenger coaches, is positioned on a centre track. Immediately to the right, stationary at a platform, is ‘V2’ class 2-6-2, No.60952, at the head of another passenger service. Several trainspotters, mostly young but mixed with one or two older enthusiasts, have underlined the ‘V2’ number and ‘A4’ ‘namer’ (trainspotting slang for a named locomotive), in their 'combined' spotters notebooks. The headboard on the ‘A4’ reads ‘Norseman’; a Kings Cross to Newcastle boat service which began c1931, although the headboard was only introduced around twenty years later. The carriages for Norway were taken by another locomotive (‘A5/2’ until 1938 and ‘V1’ afterwards) from Newcastle, to connect with the Bergen Line sailings at the Tyne Commission Quay. Here passengers were dropped off for the sailing to Norway or picked up, to return to Newcastle. The Quay was closed in 1970. I know that trainspotters were not strictly ‘railway employees’ during the steam era, but they liked to think they were. Travelling hundreds of miles on the country’s railways in pursuit of names, numbers and often, photographs, coupled with eviction from various railway properties and the occasional access to an engine cab, made them believe they were railway 'people'.