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Catching the train bug

“I paid £1.50p for them” he recalled. “Two weeks later I bought a London North Eastern Railway (LNER) signal box block instrument, and after that I was hooked.”

His charming wife Penny rolls her eyes in mock despair as her husband leads the way upstairs to a bedroom in their elegant home in Saltburn where Gordon switches on a spot light for me better to observe his more recent acquisitions of railway memorabilia.

Things have obviously moved on a pace since that visit to Whitby, evidenced by the solid brass engine nameplates on the wall which once graced the steam giants of a bygone era. Collecting on this scale obviously is not in the stamp or butterfly class. We are talking serious credit card meltdown here, which encourages the notion that Gordon was twice blessed with a railway addiction and an acute eye for a canny investment.

Pointing to his first major purchase, the “Raynham Hall” name-plate from a B17 LNER 4-6-0, for which he paid £2,200. “I couldn’t believe that I had parted with that sort of money for what amounted to 3/4 cwt of brass. The chap I bought it from told me not to worry and that I would double my money in a year. How do you know that I asked him. Because I just have, he replied”And its worth today? “Around £6000.

I invite him to refract other nameplates through the investment prism and discover that he was once offered £7000 for the “Sandwich” plate from a Gresley A3 Pacific class engine, for which he paid £4000 ten years ago. Valuable as the nameplates are, contributing in no small way to the £30,000 value he now places on his collection, some of the smaller items vie for his affection, like a clock from the old Guisborough station and the time recorder acquired from Darlington North Road railway works which he may have repaired when he was a mechanic at Kidds Business Services in Albert Road Middlesbrough.

“I’m just a born collector” he admits. “I’ll buy anything with LNER on it.” And to prove the point he shows me two 56 pound NER coal weights from Shildon works which he has just bought for £20. He enjoys especially collecting items which have a story attached to them. His favourite acquisitions are the two nameplates from locomotives built by Andrew Barclay & Sons in 1921 for Dorman Long which were named after the works that built them - Caledonia and Kilmarnock, and his quirkiest is a potty from the British Rail Eastern Hotel.

Yet one item still eludes him, and one after which he lusts, is a chime whistle from a Gresley A4 Pacific class found on such giants as Mallard and Silver Link.

Although he never wanted to become a train driver, Gordon’s love affair started as a child and spilled over into into adolescence. “I used to nick off school and go to Darlington station just to look at the trains - I once travelled to Manchester and back on a penny platform ticket. If there was ever a fully paid up anorak of a train spotter that was me. It was all triggered off when I came across a copy of Ian Allen’s ABC of British Railway Locomotives.”

Gordon recently retired after selling his office equipment company and plans now to spend more time on a secondary hobby, that of restoring old motorcycles “Come and see this Matchless I’m working on” he enthuses. There is a pleading look in Penny’s eyes, but its too late, there is no known cure for the collectors’ virus.

Alec who lives in retirement with his wife Peggy in Guisborough, searches for his father’s station master’s hat, and placing it on his head with all the care of a bishop at a coronation, recalls at the age of ten he was quite capable of operating a signal box, “I drove a locomotive from Boosbeck to South Skelton ironstone mine at the same age” he admits.” I was just in love with railways and like most kids I always wanted to become an engine driver.”

Alec later modified this ambition to achieving the status of a railway accountant, and he took an entrance exam at York. To his chagrin, he was turned down when it was discovered he was colour blind. “I suppose this was important because most of the time the railways were operating in the red, and I might have confused the colour and showed a profit.” he laughed. Actually they did Alec a favour, because subsequently he went into professional accountancy with T Percy Barrowcliff in Middlesbrough and later he joined ICI where he was a management accountant before his poor eyesight forced his early retirement.

But his love of railways remains as strong as ever and one of his favourite pieces of railway memorabilia is a 1924 LNER ticket collectors’ fares book in pristine condition. If you think present day ticket purchasing is confusing, spare a thought for the ticket office in those days. There were 33 different categories of passenger to contend with, all of whom were charged a different rate depending on whether they were fish workers, poor children on holiday, trans-migrants, shipwrecked mariners, blind ex servicemen, ships’ crews, relatives of fallen officers and men visiting Belgium, waiters, theatrical parties, and music hall artists.

A single ticket from Darlington to Northallerton in those days cost one shilling and twopence (exam question: what is this in present currency?) and you could travel from Guisborough to Berwick for ten shillings and two pence.

This article appeared in the January 1999 edition of Now & Then Magazine
www.nowandthenmag.co.uk