Re: What happens to young railfans

Not so much a railfan though, since I was more a modeller than I ever was a railfan.

My earliest memory was as a pre-schooler visiting the Capital and being terrified of the noise the Loco made pulling out of the station, fancy that !! We haven't any pictures of me back then since we were dairy farming in a rural area with only a mainline shunt during the daytime on a secondary mainline and that as over on the other side of the valley. On occasion Dad did take the farm tractor and trailer to obtain coal at the station a couple of times but never do I remember any trains there. Years later I was the fireman on the last train to shunt that country station putting off 3 highsiders of fertilizer and lifting the emptys the next day.

Dad didn't seem to be interested in the "real" railways but did take me to any miniature railway on outings and holidays, the first picture of me railfanning was taken on the Silverton train when I was 24. When my oldest Sister first went off Nursing down South, on the Friday night we would wait for her return on the late Railcar at the nearby Town station; one time there was a DA led train idling on the crossing loop in the dark, number, ground and cab lights burning. That was probably the first time I said I wanted to be a Train driver, couldn't have been any older than 7 or 8 at the time.

After leaving school early to work my parent's dairy farm and driving tractors for the local contractor, a few years passed before I figured I should take the plunge and join the Locomotive Running branch, that move saw me posted to the rail junction of Woodville and out firing on that Secondary mainline the very first week, unlike the other trainees now fireman who were babysitting some shunt loco for the first 6 months.


Brave fireman always climbed the light tower....looking West here the shunt has finished making up the Southbound #823 on 4 road, the Palmerston Nth crewed Northeast bound #932 is on the Loop waiting for a Tablet to depart or either #921 to arrive.

Not long afterward starting there, I had the misfortune to be rostered firing for a strong opinionated Enginedriver who chastised anyone hanging around as railfans, or cranks as they were called here, once I produced a camera on the loco from my bag and got the message about having that around wasn't what serious employees did. Any mention of modelling also got the dismissive gesture in those days so any pictures I did take were few and far between, getting to the habit of hardly ever carrying a camera. Old habits die hard.


Cleaning the windows extra well since we prepared our own loco in Woodville on a brand new rebuild for 934, some time around the end of '78.

Long story short, after sitting as a fireman with Enginedriver ticket for a number of years the powers that be decided to close Woodville Loco depot and downgrade the yard in the mid '80s, myself being transferred to Palm Nth depot, There my running district lengthened to around a 1000 km's of track, and a few more yard jobs, mainline Electrics and fast trains and goodbye to having my weekend's off.


Driver's seat view of the rear of #700 rounding Turangarere horseshoe curve

Recently several NZ rail photographer's have posted collections showing operations in my district, since my district was large and a lot of night runs to boot, probability of finding pictures isn't that great, Andrew Surgenor [flic.kr] took this undated one that coincides with the 5068 hauling #935 train I had on several days back in the early 90's.

Leaving the double track and getting a run at the Pukerua Bank with a trusty DX

Andrew Surgenor Photo