How trainspotting was invented... by a girl!

Research carried out at the National Railway Museum in York has found a reference to a trainspotter from as early as 1861 who is a 14-year-old girl named Fanny Johnson. Her notebook about Great Western locomotives passing Westbourne Park station in 1861, is referenced in a 1935 article in the GWR magazine, and is the earliest evidence found to date of trainspotting – the collecting of locomotive numbers.

The museum’s associate curator of rail vehicles, Bob Gwynne, said: “This is exciting because trainspotting is perceived largely to be a 20th century hobby for men, although railway enthusiasm has existed as long as the railways itself.

“This mention of a notebook titled Names of Engines on the Great Western that I have Seen turns this stereotype on its head. The hobby of taking numbers is often thought to originate with the ‘ABC books’ first printed in 1942. However it is clear that ‘spotting’ certainly started much earlier than that.”

With its Trainspotting season, the museum is exploring trainspotting, once one of the most common hobbies in the 1950s and 1960s and also delving into the psyche of today’s trainspotter.

Trainspotting runs from September 26 to March 1, 2015, at the National Railway Museum. For more information about the exhibition, visit www.nrm.org.uk/trainspotting