Author Topic: Scotsman wins FA Cup  (Read 2230 times)

Scotsman wins FA Cup
« on: 10 January, 2016, 04:35:04 pm »
SCOTSMAN WINS FA CUP


My father died when I was 6, leaving my mother with four young children and a weak heart.  Not long after, the Masons persuaded her, not without difficulty, to let them educate the boys, so enabling us to "better" ourselves and her to recuperate.  I was sent from my County Durham home to school near Watford.  There I learned fear and to support Newcastle United.  Fulfilling the Jesuitical maxim, neither of these has left me.

Six times a year, I was hauled up and down the East Coast main line by the cream of the region's locomotives, the A class Pacifics, amongst which was The Flying Scotsman.  So the chance to see it in steam after a decade off the line, on the metals of my local steam railway, the East Lancashire (ELR), was compelling.  It would also get me away from the anxiety of the 3rd round of the FA Cup for the afternoon.

Rain was certain, so I pulled on my oilskins before setting off along the Rochdale canal.



 I was quickly buoyed up by seeing a grebe in one of the dirtier sections of the cut; I'd seen a kingfisher a little further along only a week or so earlier.  Leaving the canal at Castleton, I passed the junction with the main line.  It is hoped to extend the ELR to Castleton before too long.




Conditions were poor but manageable under wheel as I sludged up the twisting Chadwick Lane to the short section of road ending in Railway Street and Heywood station.



  There was just time to get a coffeee and some home-made Bakewell tart from the excellent, if slightly out-of-focus cafe, before going on to the platform.



  Understandably, the ELR were milking the occasion and charging £3 just to go on the platform, seats for the rides behind the Scotsman having sold out weeks ago.  Less understandably, they had compromised their big opportunity of a publicity coup by having the engine providing the train-heating fail on the first trip, so that all the Scotsman's trips were running almost two hours late, just like a real railway used to.

I decided to get a ticket to ride to Bury and back on the "ordinary" trains, to pass the time.  I would have to hope the main attraction made it to Heywood before I needed to ride home.  So, the debacle forced me to travel, first behind this:-



which was polluting superbly, and then this:-



In between the two journeys, I soaked up the atmosphere on Bury station, which was in carnival mood, although there was a lot of confusion about timetables, as there was in the days of "real" steam. 



On the return, behind the "spam can" City of Wells, the rain really set in, spattering vicious tracer across the travel-stained windows.  And the smells!  Hot oil and coal smoke, scratchy plush seats - forget lenses: the next big development in photography has to be odour-capture.

When we got back to Heywood, I watched Wells run round the train.  I kept trying for photos but the weather and the low light conspired against me.  It would be another half hour before the Scotsman arrived, so I locked the bike to a beautifully-painted LMS maroon bench in the platform shelter and repaired to the only-ever-open-today waiting room, a cunningly disguised portakabin.  I whiled away time browsing thorugh a railway magazine, listening to parents explaining the Flying Scotsman to their children, with varying degrees of accuracy.  Suddenly, the air felt different; she was approaching!

We went out onto the glistening lamp-lit platform.  On she came.  Not for nothing is she called the Flying Scotsman: she is so butch, with her German smoke-deflectors slicing through the spitting rain.  It is a huge engine.  She was so silent that I wondered whether or not she was actually hauling the train or idling, while the work was being done by the "heating" engine behind, a Stanier Black 5.  The Gresley locomotive was magnificently turned out in matt black, the lettering on the cab and tender gold with scarlet shadow.  No name plate but no matter.





All those miles all those years ago.  Just such a beast had dragged me from home.  But the beauty had also hauled me back again.  The locomotive, like my mother, was innocent.

Well satisfied, I rolled over the cobbled station approach and back to the wooded lane.  It was eerie in the dark but I rode the treacherous surface far more positively than I had in the light of the afternoon, a product of being high, I suppose.  However, having had an interesting skid on the canal bank on the way out, I took the roads after the track.  The rain weas merciless but nothing could daunt me.  Even when I checked the football results to find that every North-East team had been knocked out of the cup and Rochdale had also lost, I still had a silly grin on my face.

To cap it all, Dad's Army showed the Brief Encounter episode.

And the team that did for Newcastle?  Watford.

I'm still grinning.

billplumtree

  • Plumbing the well of gitness
Re: Scotsman wins FA Cup
« Reply #1 on: 10 January, 2016, 07:52:27 pm »
Brilliant report, full of atmosphere - love the Bury station pic in particular.  Thanks Peter!

Re: Scotsman wins FA Cup
« Reply #2 on: 10 January, 2016, 08:27:58 pm »
Superb.

Thanks Peter.    :thumbsup:

Re: Scotsman wins FA Cup
« Reply #3 on: 10 January, 2016, 09:01:05 pm »
Almost poetic, thanks for that.
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

Torslanda

  • Professional Gobshite
  • Just a tart for retro kit . . .
    • John's Bikes
Re: Scotsman wins FA Cup
« Reply #4 on: 11 January, 2016, 06:53:58 pm »
Looking forward to repeat of this ride one Sunday.

Hopefully with better weather but don't hold your breath.
VELOMANCER

Well that's the more blunt way of putting it but as usual he's dead right.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Scotsman wins FA Cup
« Reply #5 on: 11 January, 2016, 08:53:10 pm »
I nearly didn't read this because I thought it was about Sportsball.  Then I spotted it was in Ride Reports.

 :thumbsup:

Re: Scotsman wins FA Cup
« Reply #6 on: 11 January, 2016, 08:56:09 pm »
Ha!  Thanks all!

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Scotsman wins FA Cup
« Reply #7 on: 18 January, 2016, 03:45:31 pm »
Wonderful report. Thank you. And yes to odour capture.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.