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. ... (continues)