For my friends and I, it meant the charge up Poplar Bank to the station. We would try to get onto the Island platform without being intercepted by "Eggy Joe", a miserable porter! Then the home signal and distance signal would announce the thunderous passing of the Lime Street to Newcastle Express. Mission completed!
Or so I thought! Every summer, we left Liverpool for a week in Ipswich seeing my Mum's half of the family. We would leave Liverpool Central on the 1.15pm Harwich Boat Train ready for some seven hours plus travelling. As most of my trainspotting was LMR around Liverpool and Wigan, we were all of sudden entering Sheffield Victoria staion behind a Woodhead Electric. A few minutes to see locos changed into either a B17 or a Britannia. The B17s were the first Eastern Region locos, I had ever seen. Trainspotting in the park near Ipswich Station brought regular B17s into view.
Around this time, my Dad took me to my first Everton match in September 1961, which just happened to be against Ipswich Town and I realised that B17 61663 was named after 'EVERTON'., which was sadly withdrawn in February, 1960. I do not remember if I saw this loco but when I returned to railway modelling in 2004, my first loco was from E-Bay called 'EVERTON'.
A few years later I treated myself to a full size replica nameplate from a craftsman at the Dean Forest Railway for just £60 only.