Why was spotting locomotives called 'trainspotting'?

[MarlowDonkey]

Thinking back to the 1950s and 1960s, it was always called "trainspotting". But it wasn't. The Combined Volumes which were the source documents mostly only recorded the motive power rather than the carriages and never the goods wagons. DMUs and EMUs arguably confuse the issue.

So why wasn't it called "Engine Spotting"?

 

[Temple Meads]

'Locospotting' was a term, as far as I know, although I can't say I was there at the time!

There was a Locospotters Annual, for instance.

 

[Condor7]

I'm not sure anyone really knows who coined the word, but while technically loco spotting would have been the correct term most people call the locomotive the train in every day life. Having been a trainspotter all my life I am still sometimes guilty of calling a single locomotive a train especially if pointing it out to a none enthusiast.

 

[JohnR]

I think you can blame the media for this. When it was "invented" (or perhaps formalised) by Ian Allen in the 40s, it was "Locospotters".

 

[Calthrop]

I'd suggest that "trainspotting / trainspotter" appealed and caught on, in part because of their somehow sounding better, and rolling more smoothly off the tongue, than the "loco-" or "engine-" equivalents; and as Condor7 says, in popular speech anything running on (non-tramway) rails, tends to be called a train.

 

[eastwestdivide]

Same reason it's called a train station?
(ducks and runs for cover)

 

[12CSVT]

Maybe from when the first DMUs came into service (about 1954). From then onwards not all trains had a loco.

 

[gg1]

Maybe from when the first DMUs came into service (about 1954). From then onwards not all trains had a loco.

Wouldn't have thought so, there were plenty of EMUs around pre war. I think Calthrop's theory is more likely.

 

[eastwestdivide]

My big Oxford English Dictionary gives "train-spotting" (with a hyphen) as "the hobby of observing trains and recording locomotive numbers", but unfortunately without a date for its first use.
"Train" itself in the sense of "a set or series of railway carriages etc" is dated to early 19th century.

 

[Spartacus]

It's certainly come in useful as people have diversified into other forms of rolling stock as the number of main line locos has dwindled.