When did all this start then?

I'm sometimes asked where I get my interest in railways from. Who knows? But one thing is sure - it was 'in my bones from my earliest memories.

When I was still in nappies my parents lived on Croft Aerodrome just a few miles south of Darlington in north east England. This airfield had been built during WW II and is now a racing circuit but around 1950 it was still in use for flying. My father had a job in 'maintenance' and we lived in a Nissen Hut on the south site of the site.

At the end of the access road, if you turned left at the gate a short walk (or in my case a push in a pram) brought you to a bridge over the East Coast Main Line just where it slimmed down from four tracks to two to cross the River Tees half a mile to the north.

I don't know how many times I pestered my parents to take me there, probably a lot. But I have clear memories as a three year old of watching the clouds float over the Cleveland Hills while a succession of trains raced up the Vale of York. I didn't know it then but I lived in a gricing nirvana, an endless procession of LNER express locomotives in all the exotic post war liveries. Long freight trains would be held at the catch points huffing in the sunshine as they waited for an express to Edinburgh or Newcastle or London to overtake. And then the clanking and clattering of three link couplings as they got underway again ...

Good grief! Fancy being let loose on the grassy embankment again with a good digital camera.

That's the trouble with time eh? No reversing it.