CHRIS MIDDLETON reveals how a series of coincidences have kept the East Coast Main Line as a thread running through his life.
FOR some reason it seems I can't get away from the East Coast Main Line. The link goes back more than 80 years to the time when my maternal grandfather was wages clerk at Selby Station in the golden age of steam. Selby proudly boasted links to North, East, South and West; not forgetting its very own line to "Bright, Breezy, Bracing Bridlington", as the LNER station posters proclaimed.
Long after grandad retired, as the diesels began to take over, I could be found every Saturday morning, a scrawny nine-year old, sitting on the porter's trolley with a packet of crisps and a notebook.
By the age of 11 my trainspotting passion was taking me and my half-price day return just about as far as the timetables would allow. Late one Saturday evening I remember the custodian of the trolley spotting me fast asleep as I pulled into Selby after an ambitious day-trip to Cardiff, thus saving me from an unscheduled trip on to Hull.
On Maundy Thursday 1969, aged 12, still trainspotting and priorities clear, I left early in the morning for Newcastle on the day the royal train brought the Queen to Selby Abbey. The station was bedecked with flowers. I told my parents how fortunate the Queen was to benefit from the special arrangements made for my departure.
University was also Newcastle, my first job Aberdeen, so the East Coast Main Line became my chosen vehicle for the weekend transportation of my washing.
My love affair with the East Coast Main Line took a severe jolt one Thursday in 1972, when I opened the local paper. With the opening of the Selby Coalfield the line was to be re-routed around the town. Not only was Selby to lose its direct North-South link but, to add insult to injury, the new line was to cut across the middle of the farm my family had farmed for generations.
Our sheep pasture was to be the wrong side of the track from the steading. A little-used public right of way at least meant a bridge for the sheep. Okay in theory, but just try getting 200 flighty ewes through a line-side gate just as a 125 thunders by and scatters them.
Father organised a clay pigeon shoot the day before the trains were due to run, the top of the bridge being an ideal place for the "trap" for high "birds", but to everyone's surprise the trains arrived a day early and it had to be hurriedly curtailed.
At first, the trains left a heady scent of beefburgers, particularly so as lunchtime approached. Not once did they stop to offer me one though. Relieving myself one day by the same hedge I had used for decades when caught short on the tractor, I suddenly found myself facing the entire complement of the Flying Scotsman.
Preferring York Station to Doncaster, on business trips to London I caught the local train from Selby to York, changing to the 125 to find myself passing my own front door at speed an hour and half after leaving home. At least it gave me an opportunity to check the sheep in the far field.
One afternoon after a meeting in the metropolis the King's Cross departure board had a surprise in store. A train to Hull, calling at Selby! That very morning a boat had dislodged the railway bridge between Goole and Hull, confirming my opinion that the natural route from Hull to London should always have been Selby not Goole. It was to be another ten years before GNER finally saw the light.
At Doncaster that day the guard proclaimed: "This train is for Hull only." Alarmed, I hammered on the door of his little cubby-hole at the front of the train. "That's not what they told me at King's Cross."
They stopped it at Selby just for me. The farmer whose farm had been split when Selby lost its London service became the first person to travel direct from the capital for a decade, and found himself on the front page of the paper.
When GNER introduced its Hull to London service via Selby last year I was naturally delighted. Even more so when, Selby businessmen being invited to send our business cards to GNER for a draw for two first class tickets to the capital, the one that came out of the hat was mine.
My wife and I had a wonderful day. The train was on time, and Barry the steward's service was as good as the breakfast, which was going some, and we were both thoroughly charmed. We played at tourists, toured Shakespeare's Globe, walked the South Bank in the sunshine and went for a trip on the Thames.
It's not very often that a busy primary teacher and a farmer with two children manage a full day of pure self-indulgence, and we loved it. On the way home it was chicken tikka wrap and elderflower presse. There was certainly none of that in my trainspotting days.
The London Evening Standard on the way home was full of GNER's hopes of retaining the franchise. I certainly hope they do, but then I have a vested interest.
If the other lot get their way, more of my land will be swallowed up by extra, in my opinion unnecessary, track.
We shall have to think a little harder about advertising "peaceful" farm holidays.
So when John Prescott travels (first class I presume) via Selby to King's Cross from his Hull constituency; remember, Barry, we're counting on you. Me and GNER both. Look after him like you looked after me, and I'm sure he will have a word with his successor as Transport Secretary Stephen Byers.
And it will all work out fine.
Chris Middleton was an assistant TV producer with BBC Scotland. He now runs the family farm and holiday cottages just outside the Selby and also works as a freelance video scriptwriter. Website: www.lundfarm.co.uk
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