Blue Peter Re-visited
Sydney Thomson
As we finished packing our bags prior to checking out and travelling back home, my wife said, 'I've picked up a leaflet from the hotel lobby that would interest you; it's about some railway museum in Doncaster'. We had been travelling and visiting down, in and around Lincolnshire and were on our way back north but in no particular hurry. As I am, amongst many other interests, a railway enthusiast, I took up the offer and we duly set off for Doncaster to find the said railway museum. I remember it was a rather dull and wet day and it took us a while to find the museum from the directions given in the brochure, but we eventually arrived.
The museum was housed in a former station and having parked in the near empty car park we proceeded to the entrance and ticket office which turned out to be the old ticket office of the station. Having bought our tickets and passed some time chatting to the man at the desk about the museum and its origins, we followed his suggested route to tour the museum. It has to be said that I showed much more enthusiasm about the whole thing than my dear wife did, but she is used to me extolling the virtues of old steam engines and associated memorabilia of a bygone age. We made our way around the various exhibits and information panels and eventually found ourselves outside, on the old platforms. There was a variety of steam age rolling-stock and engines drawn up in the platforms for inspection both from the outside and internally. You were allowed to climb into the cabs of the locomotives. Bliss for this ex-train spotter! We, I really mean I, set off with a wide grin to closely inspect each and every footplate available. I think it was maybe the third engine I approached that really got my imagination in gear. It was 'Blue Peter' an 'A2' number 60532. I climbed into the cab and was transported back to the memories of a day some fifty years previous, the day I first set foot on this footplate with my dad, as a boy of ten.
At that time my dad was a railway fireman based at the Tay Bridge sheds in Dundee. I well remember that day. It was his rest day but it was also 'payday' and he decided to go down to the sheds to collect his pay. It was the school holidays so I was around. He asked me if I would like to go with him and we could maybe visit the engine sheds. Well, being an avid train spotter who had spent many hours on Dundee station platforms catching a glimpse of passing engines, I said 'Yes'. We caught the tram, one of those with the seat backs that could be made to face forwards or backwards, down to the centre of the city and then we walked to the West Station in Dundee. I followed my dad as we made our way through the ticket barrier on to one of the platforms, right along the platform, down off the end and passed the sign that warned 'Strictly No Admittance to the Public'. We continued carefully along and over the tracks, it seemed for an age, till we eventually reached the sheds. During the trek to the sheds I had continually looked at the engines that clanked pass, heard their hissing steam and smelt the smoke. My dad had to keep reminding me to keep up and watch my feet, as dads do. We entered the sheds which were gloomy, dirty and smoky but very exciting. My dad told me to wait outside a 'wee buckie' while he went inside to collect his wages. I stood mesmerised by the sound and sight of all these locomotives so near at hand. I heard my dad say something about 'his young lad being with him' and 'about walking round the sheds'. He duly emerged, put his brown pay packet into his pocket and led me through the sheds passed lots of engines, giving me a running commentary on each of the engines we passed: type of loco, how good a 'puller' it was, how difficult to 'fire', and so on. When we had reached the far end of the shed, after walking it's whole length, we stopped next to the cab of a big loco. My dad called up to the driver on the footplate, he evidently knew him very well, and asked if we could come up on the footplate. The reply was, 'Yes', so up I went with the aid of my dad pushing my behind. He followed on with the ease and sure footedness of a man who had performed this climb so often. We were on the footplate of '60532' which I already knew was 'Blue Peter'. My dad stood with me at the back of the footplate whilst the driver and the fireman showed me around the controls in the cab. I was almost speechless. The driver opened the throttle a little and we moved off slowly, only for a short distance before we stopped again. My dad thanked the crew and we descended. I shouted a 'cheerio' to them as we made our way back through the sheds and eventually home. What a day out!
As I sat in the fireman's seat on '60532' on that day in Doncaster railway museum, I imagined my dad sitting in this same seat, for I know that he had crewed '60532', and wondered what he would have said if he could see me here now? Probably something to the effect of, 'Son it's a pity you never had the chance to get your hands dirty shovelling coal on an 'A2' from Dundee to Aberdeen, you would have probably revelled in it'.
You know what; he would have been absolutely right. He knew this train spotter well.
