Photography was always an issue in our family, father had a box Brownie pre war which somehow got swapped for a 35mm Leica via a German Officer during the invasion of Germany in 1945, but that's a long story. This got misplaced on a holiday train from Nottingham Vic to Mablethorpe, early 50's, it wasn't until he bought my brother a plastic Brownie for Xmas in 1957 that we really got going again.
Our first trip to Grantham was 1957, we had no camera, the train from Vic may well have been pulled by a GCR A5 in those days, looking at my Combined Volume at the time, I see I have marked down 69814/17/23, who knows, it may well have been one of those.
Our first excited sighting of an A4 was standing on the shed line at Grantham, only it wasn't an A4 it was 60700, I talked to my brother last week and he can confirm this, there's a shortage of photos of this loco in BR days, pity we had no camera at the time.
Our next trip was 27th May 1958, only the old man didn't hang around, he whisked us off down to Peterborough, A1 hauled down Stoke Bank, A4 on the return journey, pity it wasn't the other way around. While waiting for the train to Peterborough, we took this picture, A4 Quicksilver heading north, clearly the chime whistle is blowing, it must have been stationary though as the poor old Brownie would never have coped:
Not too brilliant, but never mind, I can never work out whether those coaches are of the blood and custard variety, more when I have a bit more time, I'm a bit busy today.
Incidently, I have another pic of Deltic at Doncaster that I took during the infamous Ian Allen works trip from Nottingham Vic, promised Truro and 1000, but ending up with a knackered B1. I also recall the first production Deltic arriving at Grantham, I'm sure it was 'Alycidon', it was full of technicians in white coats carrying clipboards, one surprised us by appearing to be Chinese, I have a pic of that incident somewhere.
