Watching The Steam Trains From This Bridge
This railway footbridge was one of my favourite places as an eleven and twelve year old lad, back in 1946 and 1947.
I would stand for ages in the centre of this bridge just waiting for the next steam train to rumble and thunder beneath me. Clouds of steam and smoke would billow up, strongly smelling and smutty stuff but highly exciting too! I would try to count the trucks or carriages as they passed below. Some of the freight trains seemed endlessly long, truck after truck after truck - with tons of coal uniformly filled and neatly mounded.
I was not "train spotting", or collecting engine numbers or anything like that. It was just the sheer joy of seeing and listening to these fascinating machines pass beneath me on this super footbridge - so long ago, but still as fresh as ever in my memory.
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RE: RE: Watching The Steam Trains From This Bridge
We lived very close to the bridge near South Croydon station; just a few houses down Coombe Road (#26)
We often watched the steam trains like you (perhaps we saw you there?) and played around the station further down the train path. There used to be a covered steps leading down from the station yard to a lower road near the railway bridge. There were gaslights hanging from the ceiling of the covered steps. Some years ago I drove through that area for the first time since the 50s and saw that the covered steps were blocked off and no longer connected to the lower road.
In those days the little sweet shop near the station sold “chews” for a farthing and the mechanics at the garage just next to the station would sometimes give us ball bearings if we asked them. I bet they saved them just to give to little boys!
There was a boys orphanage close by and two of my friends at St. Peters school lived there. Michael Grimsdale and Raymond Clayton.
Comment from Julian Hamer on Tuesday, 25th March 2008.