Phil Gillam: On the right track for nostalgia

And so when I look back over my childhood and teenage years, it’s Castlefields that dominates my memories.

Having a sentimental stroll around my old stomping ground the other day, wandering around “the block” as we used to call it – North Street, Queen Street, Burton Street and West Street – the memories came flooding back.

There was a knock at the door one night – and it must have been 1968 because The Beatles were performing Hey Jude on Top of the Pops.

I opened the door to two figures – a father and son selling the Shrewsbury Circular, a publication full of adverts, for which we paid one penny.

As I handed over the penny and took possession of the Circular, the young lad, who would have been the same age as me, eleven, asked me (in a strong Liverpool accent): “Would you like to come train-spotting some time?”

I said yes, I would.

And so began a new friendship – me and this lad called (you guessed it) Scouse.

To this day, I have absolutely no idea what his real name was.

Anyway. He and I started going down to Shrewsbury railway station about once a week, underlining in our Ian Allan book of British Railways numbers, the numbers and names of the locomotives we spotted.

Steam by this stage had completely disappeared from our railways.

But we found the diesels quite thrilling enough.

There were fairly common locomotives which (for some reason) were known as Brushes and Bo-Bos.

But there were much more exotic ones too – Warships and Westerns.

These came in different colours: blue, green and maroon. And they had exciting names.

The distinctive-looking Warship class would come with names like Vanguard, Formidable, Avenger, Champion, Daring, Druid, Eclipse, Foxhound, Glory, Goliath, Greyhound, Hercules, Highflyer, Intrepid, Jupiter, Magnificent, Majestic, Monarch, Onslaught, Zenith, Zest and Zulu.

The Westerns were called Western Campaigner, Western Ranger, Western Fusilier, Western Prince, Western Lady and Western Courier.

As Scouse and I spotted our engines, we chewed Penny Arrows and Opal Fruits or shared a Cadbury’s Bar Six or a Peppermint Aero.

We would laugh and joke and talk about the telly programmes we’d seen: Not In Front of the Children starring Wendy Craig as a scatterbrained middle-class home-maker, Blue Peter, Top of the Pops, and The Banana Splits starring (remember?) Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky.

Scouse and I would also talk about music – and what a fantastic year 1968 was for music! Apart from The Beatles with the classic Hey Jude, we had wonderful hits from Union Gap, Mary Hopkin, The Tremeloes, The Bee Gees, Mama Cass, Jose Feliciano, Amen Corner, The Hollies, Vanity Fair, Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich, and Tom Jones.

And all this chat took place against a backdrop of trains thundering into the station.

This era of the railways now seems to me to have been very short-lived.

The first withdrawals of the Western class of locomotive occurred in May 1973. This means these locos were only around for about a decade.

Seven other members from the class were withdrawn during 1973. And 1974 saw another 11 withdrawn, Then 1975 witnessed 18 withdrawals, leaving 34 of the class to run into 1976. By early 1977, there were just a handful of survivors.

It’s good to report, though, that seven Westerns have been saved for preservation. The Warships appear to have been less lucky. I don’t believe any have survived. Oh dear.

Nowadays, I often wonder if, as a boy, I would still have fallen in love with the railways had we stayed on Springfield estate instead of moving to Castlefields which of course was so close to the station.

Even though the romance of steam on the British Railways network was already a memory by 1968, Scouse and I still had a magical time, spotting engines on Shrewsbury railway station.

Happy days indeed!