A volunteer photographer’s love of steam
Volunteer Photographer Keith Wilkinson shares how his love of steam all started.
I can trace my love affair with steam back to one magical childhood moment that changed my life – forever.
I’d been off school ill and the doctor ordered that to build back my health I needed to be taken out to get fresh air on country walks.
My grandad, a tough old veteran of the Great War, was given the task. From my home we trundled along winding paths that teemed with wild flowers and hummed with bees. Soon, we rested by the sea with a view of the Lake District mountains as my grandad chain-smoked cigarettes.
Then it happened. My senses were shaken like a high voltage charge. Steam train after steam train roared by and towered over us. We were just feet away from the West Coast Mainline near Hest Bank.
The earth was rocked by mighty Stanier Pacifics, Britannias, Black Fives. From then on, I was hooked by steam. It filled my lungs and engulfed my young life. To me, it wasn’t just an interest; it was an addiction. I could hear those locos at night from my bed – their chugs and whistles. From the age of nine, I cycled miles to see them. I saved every last penny to travel behind them. I bunked around engine sheds with my mates and went on many footplate rides.
In the dying days of the steam era, I was at a secondary school that overlooked the railway. Most of my day was spent looking out of the classroom windows as those grimy, rusting beasts rattled up the steep bank out of Lancaster.
On the Long Drag I watched the very last BR steam train with my dad: the 15 Guinea Special. I saw it vanish into the distance and felt bereaved. In those final days I saw diesels tow away dead engines to the scrapyards. It was like watching friends being taken to the executioner. There were reminders everywhere that added to my sense of loss…like soot stains on stone bridges from breath that was no longer exhaled. I went down hill for a while and my headmaster wrote on my school report “Keith has run out of steam”.
Eventually I found new teenage interests. Girls and Led Zeppelin replaced steam in the early seventies. But they do say you never forget your first love. And each and every time I visit the Severn Valley Railway my happy past is stoked up once more. It’s a time machine where the deceased pals of my youth live again.
