Spreading rumour of Flying Scotsman visit had us all excited - Ian McMillan

Today we were going to the pit line, which was normally populated by endless wagons full of coal, or empty of coal, but today being a Sunday we knew that because of detours for engineering works there may be some passenger trains passing, and that made us very excited. What also made us excited was that I, for reasons known only to myself, had spread the rumour the Friday before at school that I had seen in my dad’s Yorkshire Post that the Mallard and the Flying Scotsman would both be passing Houghton Main that day.

Of course there was no such report in the paper and of course I was already regretting mentioning it but it was too late to reveal the fib now as we were already halfway down the Bridle Path, almost running to get to the fence that we would stare over all day to get those elusive numbers.

The first two hours didn’t fill much space in our notebooks, to be honest. Three long coal trains trundled by at the speed of sound, if sound travelled at the speed of a slow-moving train. One or two of our number got bored and started playing Noughts and Crosses in a notebook, which would be a serious offence if you were a real trainspotter and not just somebody pretending to be a trainspotter. One of The Trainspotting Agents stared into space, looking for passing planes, which of course were much less frequent in those days. I tried to rally the troops and pointed into the distance. ‘You might not believe this, boys’ I said with a voice that trembled with mystery, ‘but I think I can see The Thames-Clyde Express coming. It be one of the trains that’s been rerouted.’ My fellow agents looked cynical for a moment, but then something magical happened.

You’ve all heard the phrase ‘suspension of disbelief’; it’s what happens when you’re watching something like Dr Who and of course you can’t really travel in time but during the show you pretend that you can, and you quickly whizz back and forth across the calendar. Well, that afternoon our disbelief was well and truly suspended. We pretended we’d seen The Thames-Clyde Express. We pretended we’d seen The Devonian and The Mallard. We pretended, with a kind of whispering intensity, to see and hear The Flying Scotsman slowing down past the pit. Ask any of those elderly men who were boys then if they really saw The Flying Scotsman that afternoon and they’ll tell you, in all sincerity, that they did. They remember the driver waving. They remember that one of the passengers was drinking a glass of wine. They genuinely thought they saw it. And maybe, just maybe, they did.

Mind you, then one of the lads went a bit too far then and said ‘I can see…wait a minute…yes, it’s Stephenson’s Rocket! It’s Stephenson’s Rocket!’

Time to go home, I reckon. Close the notebook.