'Brio'
The title for my first story, 'Brio', is the manufacturer's name of the wooden toy train set I used to play with as a child. I would spend hours playing with this stuff, laying the wooden track from one side of the house to the other. The real highlight was going into Coventry City Centre and playing on the 'Brio' layout displayed in the front window of the Early Learning Centre shop.
On one of my many visits as a child to the city, I was as usual, accompanying my Mum on a shopping trip with the promise of a visit to the Early Learning Centre once she had finished. Now there is only so much time you can spend in BHS as a child and I really wanted to play on the Brio! I knew the way to the Early Learning Centre, so I walked out of the shop and made the quarter mile walk across town on my own. I was only about 4 :-), anyway whilst I had the BHS shop security and my Mum in an utter meltdown, I happily played in the shop window on the wooden train set. I was found about an hour later unharmed, but from that day forth anytime we went to town I was strapped to my Mum with reins.
'The Battlefield Line Railway'
My Grandad is an early member of this railway, then both my Dad and Uncle became working members. From an early age I used to tag along and help them out, passing spanners etc, but my favourite thing to do was to watch the steam locomotives run round the train at Shakerstone Station.
Once the train had come to a stop in platform two, I would watch the fireman from the platform edge uncouple the loco from the train. Then the locomotive would set back from the coaching stock to the point before being given the signal for platform one. In this time I would run up the steps of the mesh footbridge and stand over line 1 to watch the loco pass below me. The fascination was the smell of the smoke as it engulfed the bridge. It is something I think all enthusiasts would agree is addictive. No matter what I did I would also go home filthy, as if I had been on the footplate myself.
'Soot'
My final story comes from a day out on Severn Valley Railway and could have put me off the hobby for life. This is the only thing I can remember from that day and was a painful lesson. I liked sticking my head out of the window to watch and listening to the loco as it went along the line. Even though I had been told time and time again to watch out for soot getting in my eyes I still did it. I didn't see the danger. Well the inevitable happened but rather than telling someone straight away I managed to hide it and got through the rest of the day. The pain just got worse and worse and when I went to bed that night it was unbearable, and spent the rest of the evening in tears at A & E with my Dad. Luckily the doctors removed the soot and I hadn't done any lasting damage.
I'm not sure if it was taken before or after the soot was in my eye, but here is a picture of me from that day.
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