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Category: Spotting Memories

Thus category is used for posts related to spotting posts or pages related to train spotting at Grantham.

Published on Leave a comment on Tracks through Grantham: September 2022 Update
Above: The northbound 'Elizabethan' express from London King's Cross to Edinburgh Waverley, hauled by Haymarket A4 No. 60031 'Golden Plover' on Saturday* 14 June 1958.
© Photograph by Roger Bamber

Roger Bamber

We've been saddened to hear that our contributor Roger Bamber passed away on Sunday 11th September, aged 78.

Roger grew up in Leicester and as a boy he made several visits to Grantham station, usually cycling over the hilly A607 via Melton Mowbray.   He became a celebrated professional photographer and photojournalist whose work appeared in many national newspapers and magazines.  Roger won dozens of awards, most notably the British Press Photographer of the Year twice and News Photographer of the Year twice also.

Two years ago Roger got in touch with Tracks through Grantham from his home in Brighton to offer some of his earliest memories and photographs.  They are on our page Haymarket Rarities - captured with a plastic camera.

Several tributes to Roger and his career have appeared on the internet.  In one of them, for the Brighton paper The Argus, his wife Shan says, "Roger loved steam trains, one of the reasons he came to Sussex was for the Bluebell Railway but he ended up in Brighton and decided it was the 'best place in the world' and that's why he stayed."

There's an appreciation of Roger Bamber, illustrating the range of his work, on The Guardian website here.

Tracks through Grantham meeting, October 2022

Just a reminder about this event, which was the subject of a post circulated on Wednesday 31st August.  If you intend to join us please don't forget to let us know.

A Recently Updated Website Page

Gonerby Siding Signal Box

  • Back in March we published a new page about the box at Gonerby after Malcolm Rush told us about his visit there in January 1967 in the company of Grantham Station Manager Alec Wise.  Malcolm told us that Gonerby was the only box, of 184 that he visited, where the operator was a signalwoman.  This set us on the trail of trying to find out who this lady was.

A number of people helped, and we soon identified that she was Mrs Carter, the wife of signalman Albert Carter at Grantham South.  Then, a few weeks ago, an email arrived from George Watson who, as a boy, used to visit Gonerby box.

To read George's fascinating account go to our Gonerby Siding Signal Box page and scroll down just over halfway, to the heading Bett Carter: signalwoman at Gonerby Siding.

Recent features of interest

We keep an eye open elsewhere for items of Grantham area railway interest.  Here are some we've seen recently.

The Facebook Group Rail Thing - REAL Trainspotting (1945-1968)

Please note that the links to Facebook from this section only work if you are logged in to Facebook.

1.  Patrick Clay is posting photographs taken in the Grantham area and elsewhere by his father, John F. Clay.  Follow this link to find the Grantham area pictures, or go to the group on Facebook here and search ('search this group') for 'Patrick Clay Grantham'.

John F. Clay wrote the Foreword of Rev. A. C. Cawston's  book LNER Steam at Grantham, in which he says that as a schoolboy photographer in the 1930s he met Arthur Cawston and Thomas Hepburn on the platforms at Grantham.   In his Introduction to the same book Cawston tells us that John Clay was, for many years, a schoolmaster at Grantham.  John F. Clay's photographs have appeared in a number of books and periodicals, and he wrote an article about Grantham's railway heritage in The Railway Observer.

2.  Our regular contributor Richard Cumming has penned an absorbing account  of a visit to his Uncle Arthur on Merseyside in 1955.  Written in the same style as his popular articles for Tracks through Grantham (they're in our Spotters' Corner section), there's plenty of railway interest plus such things as his impressions of the docks and of attending Anfield to watch Liverpool FC.

Titled A train spotting holiday in Liverpool in 1955, Richard's essay can be downloaded as a Word document called 'Liverpool Holiday.docx' from here.

The Grantham Matters website:

In the past 3 months this local history website has published a few items of railway interest:

Steam World magazine:

In the current issue of Steam World is an item which might interest Tracks though Grantham subscribers:

September 2022 (Issue 423):

  • pages 26 and 27 is a photo feature titled East Coast Main Line Moments.  It's a selection of four colour photographs by Noel Ingram, prolific recorder of traffic on the East Coast Main Line between Grantham and Peterborough in the early 1960s.

Remember that you’re very welcome to stay in touch with us…

via the Tracks through Grantham website:

  • for feedback on a specific page, use the 'Comment' box under 'Leave a Reply', which appears at the bottom of most pages;
  • otherwise, use the general Contact Form found here.

All the best,

John & Mel

 

Published on

It's time for our second selection of photographs taken exactly 60 years ago on one of a series of visits to Grantham station by my father and me.

The Tracks through Grantham time machine takes us back to Thursday 16th August 1962.  Go to the Sixty Years and Counting header page and scroll down to the link.

John Clayson

Published on Leave a comment on Sixty years and counting: Grantham station photographs on their diamond anniversary

We're publishing some new pages of photographs taken at Grantham in the early 1960s.  Each group of pictures was taken on a visit made to the station by my father and me on a Thursday afternoon, and it will appear in a new page on or around the 60th anniversary of the trip.  The time span is between August 1961 and July 1964.  Our visits took place between spring and autumn, on 19 occasions in total.

The photos will be added to the Grantham Railway Galleries section of our website.  To find the first group, from Thursday 12th July 1962, go to the header page and scroll down to the link.

On the header page, with the note of each new group of pictures, there will be an invitation to look out for the next group.

We hope you enjoy the photos as they appear.

John Clayson

Published on Leave a comment on 24 Hours at Grantham Station in 1961

We've just added a new page to the website describing a marathon 24 hour period spent on the platforms at Grantham. It's based around the 1961 Summer Working Time Table (WTT) and includes a selection of suitable photographs to illustrate some of the 300+ workings and movements taking place between midnight and midnight. You can step back in time and watch the action here.

Published on

Early in August a website contact form arrived from David Page who enquired, "If you would like some reminiscences of a lifelong steam enthusiast from c.1950 onwards, including a few photos from the early 1960s to the present day, please feel free to contact me."

The very pleasing result is our latest new page, simply titled Grantham!, which connects David's earliest experiences of the railway at Grantham, in the early 1950s, with his enjoyment of 21st century main line steam.

The story begins with the memories of a young lad who in the early 1950s travelled by train from Nottingham to stay with an aunt and uncle.  Recollections include an A1, Kittiwake, in BR blue livery speeding north with a Pullman service; David also records his disappointment when the aunt and uncle moved away and he could, at least for the time being, no longer visit and enjoy the excitement of east coast expresses.

We look back at some local news items which illuminate the wavering relationship between loco spotters and the railway authorities at Grantham during the 1950s.

Happily, in the early 1960s David's relatives moved back to the town and he describes his reacquaintance with the Grantham railway scene.  Now he had a camera and a growing interest in photography, and also a feeling that he should try to make his own personal record of the last few years of east coast steam.  His endeavours extended to taking photographs from the windswept and chilly station platforms early in February 1963, in the midst of the UK's record-breaking arctic winter. 

The early 1960s may have been the finale, but there has been a curtain call.  The narrative and photographs extend into the age of digital imaging.  The page concludes with three superb pictures of northbound specials taken by David at Belton Lane. They are hauled by A3 No. 60103 Flying Scotsman, A4 No. 4464 Bittern and A1 No. 60163 Tornado  …and the A1 was in early BR blue, just as Kittiwake had been bedecked some six decades before.

The new page is in our Spotters' Corner section; the link above will take you directly to it.

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Published on 2 Comments on Phil Wilson’s Trainspotting Days at Grantham

Tracks through Grantham have recently been in touch with Phil Wilson who lived in Grantham until the late 1960s.  Phil has kindly allowed TTG the opportunity to share some of his photographs and detailed notes made during many spotting trips around the area in the early 1960s. This is the latest page to be added to our Spotters Corner section. If you have a story of your own, then please do get in touch. You can visit Phil's page here

Published on Leave a comment on Riding back to Happy Days…

Let's forget today's bothersome restrictions on travel for a while and get out and about again in the Tracks through Grantham Tardis.

Richard's Cumming's latest highly entertaining article describes how, in 1956, the arrival of his new bike stimulated an eagerness to push the boundaries of youthful exploration well beyond the horizon of his home town of Grantham.

His first ventures were to the relatively close-at-hand surroundings of local towns and countryside, exploring rumours of unfamiliar breeds of locomotive to be seen on their native territory.  Ultimately, though, the call of far-away engines with strange-sounding names (and numbers) led Richard to the uncharted lands of the West Midlands and Shropshire.

We're sure you'll enjoy travelling with Richard on trips that were inspired by an interest which took root during his earlier enjoyment of the railway scene around Grantham.

If, by way of introduction, you'd first like to read (or to re-read) Richard's previous accounts of Grantham-based spotting adventures, they are here:

There's a link at the end of the first page to take you forward to the next, and then on to the new article.

Or you can go straight to the new page, in which case why not dust off that old bike and get pedalling out of lockdown to share the excitement of Richard and his friends in Train Spotting Bicycle Trips away from Grantham.

(…and don't worry, he'll wait for us to catch up on the hills.)

 

Published on

Edinburgh Haymarket-based A3 60100 Spearmint was a bit of a rare sight as far south as our Tracks through Grantham territory, so when the locomotive turned up in two separate stories recently sent in by Alan Wilce and Roger Bamber we were tempted to rename 60100 as Doublemint!  However, having chewed it over, we decided to keep things as they were, so hopefully our two new pages in 'Spotters’ Corner' from Roger and Alan will bring a breath of fresh air for our readers.

So join 13-year-old Roger Bamber on Grantham station in 1958, having travelled by bike over the hilly A607 from Leicester.  When opportunities arise to capture some Haymarket Rarities on film, Roger is ready with his camera.  One of the images is a photograph that helped to determine his career.

Then join Alan Wilce in 1960.  Alan arrived from Melton Mowbray in his parents' car.  His records were taken with pencil and notepad rather than film and now, with his Ian Allan ABC 'Combined Volume', his memories and some archive timetables, Alan re-creates for us the excitement of a 3-hour Summer Evening Visit to Grantham in 1960 during which 60100 Spearmint made another rare appearance at the station. 

 

Published on Leave a comment on Leicester Lads found a View from a Bridge

Bob has recently been in touch with an enquiry.

I know I am clutching at straws but here goes!  In the early '60s my friend and I used to travel from Leicester to Grantham trainspotting.  They are fondly remembered days.  We used to walk to a road bridge, climb up the slope at the side and sit on the fence at the top.  The sheds were close by on our left with the main line in front.  I think the road was the route through Grantham to the east coast.
Is it possible that one of your members may have a photo showing either the bridge with a loco beyond or above, or maybe a picture of spotters at the location?
Any help much appreciated.

Exchanging a few emails, and with clues picked up from Mike Bacon's page in Spotters' Corner, we worked out that the bridge over Springfield Road was a perfect match.  Bob kindly filled in a little more background, and we had the nucleus of our latest page: How we discovered Springfield Road Bridge.

One of the pleasures of developing the content of Tracks through Grantham is that sometimes we don't know where the material for our next new page is going to come from ... but we can be sure that something will always show up!  So if you have a memory or a query and have been thinking about sending it, don't hold back any longer!