When did the rail enthusiast hobby start?

[Peter Mugridge]

What an extraordinary youthful activity. I was more into kissing girls ...

There was once someone famously kissing 55 022 at King's Cross - and it was shown on the BBC TV News the same evening...

( It was not me before anyone asks!!! )

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The early locomotive enthusiasts would have been sneered at by the stage coach bashers.
They had to carry the Ian Allan book of horses, heavier than the BR 1974 all line timetable, and stay up all night to record all of the horse changes. They also had to have 1S25 by Lord Howard of Effingham, that listed all of the 1825 stage coach journeys, and Horse Hauled Travel that gave the horse diagrams, in case they passed a big horse going the other way and needed to know what stage coach it came back on.
Then they had to contend with Hobson's Choice, being bowled for some half lame crocks when they were hoping for the same hellfire beasts that they had last time.

There are satirical asides in Ben Elton's Upstart Crow TV series, of supposed journeys by William Shakespeare between London and Stratford on Avon around 1600.
It was in the stagecoach era, but uses the modern railway delay excuse language of "replacement coach services" and "Sunday crew shortages".

W.S.Gilbert's first patter song was in Thespis, an entertainment produced in 1871 with music by Arthur Sullivan (their first collaboration, but unfortunately most of the music is lost).
It has a railway theme and the full version is on p14/15 of this Wiki link: https://gsarchive.net/thespis/thespis.pdf
This is the opening (there are 5 verses like this). It clearly would have some resonance with the theatre-going public at the time:

I once knew a chap who discharged a function
On the North South East West Diddlesex junction,
He was conspicuous exceeding,
For his affable ways and his easy breeding.
Although a Chairman of Directors,
He was hand in glove with the ticket inspectors,
He tipped the guards with bran-new fivers,
And sang little songs to the engine drivers.

Gilbert lived at Harrow Weald and commuted to Euston.
He once wrote a complaining letter to the LNWR saying:
"Saturdays, which recur at regular and easily predictable intervals, always seem to take your company by surprise"...

 

[70014IronDuke]

But I would suggest that it was Ian Allan’s spotting books and the other handbooks that soon followed that turned a relative minor hobby practiced by a relatively small number of people individually or in small groups to one enjoyed by a large number. Something would probably have set off the hobby post-war, but it was the availability of the little books that allowed you to know a bit about what you saw that started an interest that could broaden out in different directions.

This, exactly! I think anyone who did not experience a chunk of the steam era* can not understand the astounding universe that the railways presented to a kid of 8-10-12 years old back in the day. You stood on a platform at a main line station and saw all these amazing green (and sometimes red) monster machines storming past or stopping, men jumping around and filling the tenders and then chugging off, with maybe a diesel or two thrown in - and you thought: What on earth is this all about?

Then some other kid on the platform would come along and show you his Ian Allan book with all his underlinings and show you the Hall/Jubilee/King Arthur/A3 etc that had just pulled out of the station - and there - amidst pages and pages of numbers and names - there it was - 60513 Dante - and you might even have a photo of it or a sister engine. It meant somehow it all began to make a little bit of sense - not that you knew what or who the hell Dante was (I didn't! Not for many years!).

And then you got your mum or dad to top up your pocket money to 2/6d and you got the book and proudly underlined the thing and the bug was caught!

* When I say this, it's not, of course, just the locomotives - there were the manual signal boxes with their bells ringing and clanking signals and porters and mail bags flung hither and thither ... it was just a scene of human action. Slowly, but surely, it all began to make sense.

You could, of course, made progress without the books, but they surely helped hundreds of thousands of kids post war into the railway world.

 

[Taunton]

Ian Allan was, beyond a railway cognoscenti and a publisher, a knowledgeable commercial businessman. Instead of just waiting for orders, he actually employed salesmen on the road, who worked around their particular part of the country and who went into not only major bookshops but also the myriad corner shops of the era, persuading them to put one or two of the books in the shop window, and more inside, on a 'sale or return' basis, that is they just handed over a stock, then returned the next month to see how many had gone, collect the takings, and restock. So they appeared as a mainstream product everywhere.

Notably each year's issue had a completely different front cover, to appeal as "the new one". Different photo, different artwork. No corporate image style, it just looked different, and worth replacing last year's one with.

 

[Rescars]

One aspect of enthusiasm which hasn't featured in this thread so far is preservation. In response to the OP's question, the answer regarding preservation is presumably 11th October 1950 - the date on which the public meeting was held where the idea of setting up a committee to explore the acquisition of the Talyllyn was first floated.

 

[Sun Chariot]

One aspect of enthusiasm which hasn't featured in this thread so far is preservation. In response to the OP's question, the answer regarding preservation is presumably 11th October 1950 - the date on which the public meeting was held where the idea of setting up a committee to explore the acquisition of the Talyllyn was first floated.

Although in 1935 the London, Midland and Scottish Railway set aside the unique 4-2-2 Neilson ex-Caledonian 123 (LMS 14010) for preservation.
It ran numerous Scottish Region excursions, during the early 1960s; and happily it's still with us. In my view, it's one of the most elegant locomotives built.

 

[Gloster]

I think that the Stephenson Locomotive Society was involved in the preservation of the Brighton’s Gladstone in 1927.

The society was itself formed in 1909, but I think it was rather intended to allow those who were already interested to exchange information, discuss and assist others, rather than to spread the word. There was also The Railway Club that was founded in 1899 (or 1889), but I think that it was also rather more for those who were already ’in’; the SLS may have had a slightly more technical attitude.

 

[Rescars]

Although in 1935 the London, Midland and Scottish Railway set aside the unique 4-2-2 Neilson ex-Caledonian 123 (LMS 14010) for preservation.
It ran numerous Scottish Region excursions, during the early 1960s; and happily it's still with us. In my view, it's one of the most elegant locomotives built.

I think that the Stephenson Locomotive Society was involved in the preservation of the Brighton’s Gladstone in 1927.

The society was itself formed in 1909, but I think it was rather intended to allow those who were already interested to exchange information, discuss and assist others, rather than to spread the word. There was also The Railway Club that was founded in 1899 (or 1889), but I think that it was also rather more for those who were already ’in’; the SLS may have had a slightly more technical attitude.

Points well made. Whilst a number of locos and other artifacts were preserved earlier, the Talyllyn was the first time a group of enthusiasts set out to preserve an entire railway.

 

[norbitonflyer]

There are satirical asides in Ben Elton's Upstart Crow TV series, of supposed journeys by William Shakespeare between London and Stratford on Avon around 1600.
It was in the stagecoach era, but uses the modern railway delay excuse language of "replacement coach services" and "Sunday crew shortages".

Mark Steel, in his latest "In Town" show, from Lewisham, reimagined a writing by Christopher Marlowe (who was famously murdered there)

"I summoneth my carriage, but quickly do i learn my horse hath no rider, for it was a Docklands Light Horse, and a strange fellow sat beside me pretending to be the rider"

(available on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002l35f - this bit is near the end, at about 37:55 minutes in, but the whole thing is worth listening to - there are some pithy comments about the Bakerloo non-extension)

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Someone mentioned "track bashers" earlier - a gentleman from Hampton or Henley in Arden was reported as being the first to cover the open to passenger service in the UK and Eire as far back as 1931 - T. R Perkins ? , a retail chemist.

Mentioning kissing Deltics - there was a well known enthusiast in the West Country with a particular fondness for class 50's who used to reward her favourite locos with a Smartie or 2 placed on the buffer shanks and some encouraging words !

As the French say -"Chacun a son gout" (each to their own)

 

[Calthrop]

Someone mentioned "track bashers" earlier - a gentleman from Hampton or Henley in Arden was reported as being the first to cover the open to passenger service in the UK and Eire as far back as 1931 - T. R Perkins ? , a retail chemist.

That was indeed the chap -- T.R. Perkins, chemist of Henley as above. To be extremely nit-picking: per my understanding, he competed his mission actually in 1932 -- his last line in the bag: the Kilmessan -- Athboy branch, then of the Irish Free State's Great Southern Railways. At the risk of blowing own trumpet -- there's a thread, started by me, about T.R. Perkins: on "Railway History & Nostalgia". I fear I don't have the skill of linking to threads -- have to do it by "giving directions": thread title, The Man Who Went Everywhere -- OP 6 / 1 / 2016.

It's a particular puzzle to me, how Mr. Perkins managed -- at rail systems' peak -- to cover the entirety of that of Ireland, as well as Great Britain; especially at the time in history when he was doing his thing -- no abundant and easily- affordable air travel between G.B. and Ireland !

 

[D7666]

Getting back to the OP's question, as far as I'm aware, haulage bashing took off much later than spotting (probably in the 1970s, around the time the Westerns were being withdrawn).

Well that is just plain wrong. Sorry but I can't word it less bluntly than that.

There were haulage bashers doing D800s before D1000s; at least one is still around today, I can remember him doing it while D800s ruled Exeter Waterloo.

Incidentally, IIRC same person had 510 duffs too. By the same token, I know of two quite seperate individuals who both had 97 D6500s with each one missing a different one. So that put them as early 1960s bashers too. One of those used to have a tee shirt bespoke printed "I pushed Huskisson".

But well before that there were steam bashers long before diesels bashers.

Well known current loco bashers such as The Leader (and if you don't know who I mean then you don't know haulage bashing) started out mid 1960s steam on the Waterloo Bournemouth line, and "apprenticed" to several long standing steam bashers (one of which at least is still around now). And I bet those elders followed on from earlier persons.

I can also point to SR EMU bashers doing things like Cors (so 1972 and before), and before that Bils and Hals (1970/71 and before) and then before Puls and Pans (1964/65 and before).

Back in 1982 when I was doing 25s most summer Saturdays on the Cambrian, it happened the following day was a run with Sarah Siddons, the first for a number of years. I mentioned I was doing that next day, to which one of the regular Cambrian 25s followers said they had had something like three quarters of those LT ex-Met. locos, and the following weekend produced the moves books.

Those are just the individuals I know or came across - there must be 00's of others out there all knowing further such bashers.

Nothing is new under the sun. WW2 may well have introduced a gap in note and number taking, record making, and travel though, and may explain the post war burst in number crunching and travel.

Going way back, many early railways did not number locomotives only named them, and or other systems re-used low numbers over and over (LNWR for example) - E.S.Cox refers to a curiosity then interest in LNWR spotting and numbering - and that predates WW1. ISTR he comments that with names only or with recycle numbers filling in low digits gaps you can't determine how many there are of a type etc, which sparked curiosity. O.S.Nock seems to have had similar beginnings. By then railways were already decades old - and I'd agree there were trainspotter(s) meaning interested amateur observer(s) as opposed to industry interests at the Rainhill trials.

I think the hobby goes back to the dawn of railways - Dvořák, great Czech composer (1841 -1904) was famously an enthusiast and could often be seen at Prague's main station observing operations.

Antonín Dvořák representing composers and contemporary Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) representing artists.

 

[norbitonflyer]

Going way back, many early railways did not number locomotives only named them,

As mentioned upthread, the GWR never gave numbers to its Broad Gauge engines.

 

[Calthrop]

Antonín Dvořák representing composers and contemporary Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) representing artists.

I get the impression -- perhaps I wrong the chap there -- that Monet was a rather cross-grained and contrary individual: wonder a little, whether perhaps he actually hated trains and railways; but found them a good subject for pictures. Think I read somewhere, that there was a branch line which ran very close by his place at Giverny in Normandy; Monet made a point of being on good terms with the local stationmaster -- but that was self-interest: he wished to grease the wheels for folk visiting him, and for stuff being dispatched "to and from".

 

[Gloster]

I get the impression -- perhaps I wrong the chap there -- that Monet was a rather cross-grained and contrary individual: wonder a little, whether perhaps he actually hated trains and railways; but found them a good subject for pictures. Think I read somewhere, that there was a branch line which ran very close by his place at Giverny in Normandy; Monet made a point of being on good terms with the local stationmaster -- but that was self-interest: he wished to grease the wheels for folk visiting him, and for stuff being dispatched "to and from".

I had to study Monet at university and I cannot remember anything about him being an enthusias; I am sure that I would have remembered if there was anything that even vaguely hinting at that. I don’t think that he specifically sought out railway views, other than the dozen around St Lazare in 1877 which might just be a theme that occurred to him like any other. Railways did appear in other paintings, but that is hardly a surprise considering that he produced nearly two-thousand.

 

[DarloRich]

Where do we place people like Nicholas Wood? He wrote his influential book A Practical Treatise on Rail-roads and Interior Communication in 1825.

He was certainly a professionally enthusiastic supporter of early railways!

Wiki entry here for those interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Wood

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Oct 2025 ==

reports on a drawing from 1825 of the first train on the Stockton to Darlington railway by another fourteen-year-old, this time a boy by the name of John Backhouse

I think the child of one of the financial backers of the line

Incidentally - I wonder if much has been made about this in the year of Railway 200?

There is what I assume is a replica in a case on the current inspiration train

 

[D7666]

Define "enthusiast" and also define what counts as "enthusiasm" for a subject.

Collecting trains numbers ? YES ?

Taking photos of trains ? YES ?

Taking photos of stations ? YES ?

So painting trains and stations => YES.

If you say NO then David Shepherd and Terence Cuneo and a load of others are equally NO.

 

[35B]

Define "enthusiast" and also define what counts as "enthusiasm" for a subject.

Collecting trains numbers ? YES ?

Taking photos of trains ? YES ?

Taking photos of stations ? YES ?

So painting trains and stations => YES.

If you say NO then David Shepherd and Terence Cuneo and a load of others are equally NO.

Hmmm. Cuneo and Shepherd both had an acknowledged interest in railways. I know nothing of Monet's interest, but would want to know more than just that he chose them as an interesting artistic subject before taking a view that he was an enthusiast. Otherwise you'll make a claim that Turner, who's "Rain Steam and Speed" is one of the great early pieces of railway art, was a railway enthusiast when there's little or nothing to support that hypothesis.

 

[The exile]

Define "enthusiast" and also define what counts as "enthusiasm" for a subject.

Collecting trains numbers ? YES ?

Taking photos of trains ? YES ?

Taking photos of stations ? YES ?

So painting trains and stations => YES.

If you say NO then David Shepherd and Terence Cuneo and a load of others are equally NO.

It depends on why someone paints or photographs trains. If it's for commercial or research reasons, there's no reason why the person doing it should be classified as an enthusiast. If it's entirely for their own interest / benefit, then they probably are!

 

[Sun Chariot]

It depends on why someone paints or photographs trains. If it's for commercial or research reasons, there's no reason why the person doing it should be classified as an enthusiast. If it's entirely for their own interest / benefit, then they probably are!

+1 to this

When British Rail launched Railfreight's six sub-sectors, I received a publicity calendar (with class 37 Ripple Lane sporting yellow cast nameplate).
I'd wager that the photographers weren't rail enthusiasts.

 

[Brightonboy]

No-one has mentioned the two books that got me interested; first off, when very young, a Ladybird book of trains and then, when I was perhaps 10 or 11, the Observers Book of British Railway Locomotives, a birthday present from my older brother's then girlfriend. I have, I think, still got the book in a box somewhere and he still has the girl (now wife, of course,) after over 50 years of marriage!

 

[Rescars]

Define "enthusiast" and also define what counts as "enthusiasm" for a subject.

Collecting trains numbers ? YES ?

Taking photos of trains ? YES ?

Taking photos of stations ? YES ?

So painting trains and stations => YES.

If you say NO then David Shepherd and Terence Cuneo and a load of others are equally NO.

Going back to the early days, was Charles Rous-Marten merely a professional observer of railway practice or should he be more accurately described as a serious enthusiast?

 

[birchesgreen]

I recall a cartoon in Punch - possibly from 1975 - which depicted a Georgian [yes, railways are that old] gent with notebook and pencil standing by the Stockton and Darlington as Locomotion No. 1 passed and saying 'It will be a lot more fun when there are more of them'!

The Bash Street Kids did a similar joke around the same time, when Teacher imagines he was George Stephenson. Somehow the kids have the same dream and Smiffy is noting the number. When asked why as there is only one loco so far he says he likes easy hobbies!

 

[70014IronDuke]

Define "enthusiast" and also define what counts as "enthusiasm" for a subject.

Yup, fair question. I don't think my own dad would count as an enthusiast, but I get the impression a general interest in railways was not uncommon pre WW2. As his interests were engineering in general, and he originated from Co Durham, not too far from Darlington, he certainly knew quite a bit about the engineering side of things, such as the Hush-Hush (W1 4-6-4) and of trains such as The Coronation.

He might not have known what the LNER Class A1 meant, and he surely did not know the loco numbers, but he saw enough of them in real life to say that Flying Scotsman was the most handsome design aestethically that he knew of.

I kind of think people took a lot more notice and the media reported on rail developments more, at least as a proportion of what the media turned out back then - far fewer column inches on what today we call 'celebrities'.

 

[The exile]

I kind of think people took a lot more notice and the media reported on rail developments more, at least as a proportion of what the media turned out back then - far fewer column inches on what today we call 'celebrities'.

Hardly surprising considering that until the mid 1950s (roughly) the railway was the only viable option for longer distance travel (until it got so long you went by sea). They were thus either a part of your life or an essential part of your (realistic) dreams (as in dreaming of a week in Skegness or Llandudno rather than seeing yourself as a glamorous starlet boarding an aeroplane at Croydon)

 

[70014IronDuke]

Hardly surprising considering that until the mid 1950s (roughly) the railway was the only viable option for longer distance travel (until it got so long you went by sea). They were thus either a part of your life or an essential part of your (realistic) dreams (as in dreaming of a week in Skegness or Llandudno rather than seeing yourself as a glamorous starlet boarding an aeroplane at Croydon)

Hardly surprising, true, when you consider the context - but people forget these things.

 

[Strathclyder]

There was once someone famously kissing 55 022 at King's Cross - and it was shown on the BBC TV News the same evening...

I think I know what and who you're referring to here; I've seen it several times over the years, most recently in the NRM Curator With A Camera episode on the Deltics uploaded about 2 years ago to their YT channel. It also appeared on the ITV news broadcast that same evening I believe.

I would normally say 'each to their own', but if I were there that day and given the nature and atmosphere of the event, I have no shame in admitting that I'd have done the same!

 

[Peter Mugridge]

It also appeared on the ITV news broadcast that same evening I believe.

It was on the BBC News as well... it was there that I saw it, and yes - that evening.