Dear Diary – Page 38 (Late 1950’s – New England Loco Sheds)

Train spotting was a major focus from 1958 through to 1963, and Pat and I would often “do” New England Sheds on Sundays as they were only about a 20 minute bike ride away.

We would go in via a footbridge and sneak past the Foreman’s office and into the sheds. Once in, we would quickly walk up and down the various rows of locomotives writing down numbers as fast as we could. If we felt that we were particularly safe, we would climb up into the cabs of a number of them!

Below (left) is a photo of the results of a Sunday visit (34E was the British Railways Shed Code for Peterborough New England Sheds). The red “C’s” indicated locos cabbed (8 in total), and the red cross-out lines were done after I had underlined then neatly in my train spotters book! 1960 New England 1 

1959 PatB Sheds

On a “visit” to New England Sheds with Pat in the early 1960’s, I took this photograph (upper right). That is Pat in the left foreground. It must have been a cold day based on his clothes. As we were out in the open at that time, the sheds must have exceptionally quiet otherwise somebody would have shouted at us but then, the workers were all boys once and so probably ignored us as long as we were not getting into trouble.

In 1959, Pat went on holiday to Folkestone and sent me the Post Card below. The important part was to tell me that he had seen “13 Southern, 4 Diesels and 4 Western”. It was so exciting!

1959 PatB Card2The only reason that this Post Card survived was that Pat had picked one with a photograph of a ship on the other side of it. It therefore ended up in an album with many other ship photographs!

17 thoughts on “Dear Diary – Page 38 (Late 1950’s – New England Loco Sheds)”

  1. Mir Fleur's avatar

    I just read 39, so I am a bit back to front, but this is great stuff! I’m a few years behind you, but also used to go train spotting. (In our case, I confess it was so we could hang around with the boys that we’d taken a liking to 🙂 ). Mir xx

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