When was your first railway journey alone?

[30907]

When I started what is now y5 but was then 3rd year juniors, so just 9. School moved to a different site, and my parents worked out that train from Shortlands to Beckenham Jn was the safest route to avoid crossing a busy road. Mind you, I had been using buses alone for the school run for a couple of years before that.

 

[Kite159]

Earliest for me probably would have been year 9/10 heading to either Salisbury or Basingstoke for some shopping.

 

[FQ]

For me it was on 03/05/14, with Leamington-Warwick Parkway-Bicester North-Leamington-Bicester North-Leamington solo. That was when I was 12. I had done a few return trips from Leamington to Warwick Parkway the month before, but that was with Nat67, who was 14 (I think) at the time.

For quite a while before that I did cycle from home to Leamington to watch the trains for the morning or day before going back though.

 

[Ianno87]

Age of about 15, coming back from a hospital appointment, all the way from Salford Crescent to Bolton. On a pacer as well.

Had been travelling on buses on my own for a number of years before that.

 

[robbeech]

I guess it must have been when I did work experience in Mansfield, it'd be in 1999. Whitwell station had only been (re)open around a year at this time so having a train station in the village was still very new to many people. This was back when you'd get 158s or 170s on the line. Of course now 18 years later if we get a 158 it's considered luxury and a 156 is the norm. I remember not knowing how to get to and from Mansfield station to where I was going so I devised a route that I took for the whole period of work experience. It was about 10 minutes walk so that was ok. On the very last day I overheard someone asking how to get to the station and realised it was a 2 minute walk up the road. If only smart phones with google maps (other maps are available) existed back then. A year or so later I had a girlfriend from Norwich so would get the train to Nottingham then one to Norwich.
I now consider the train for every trip I make, sadly the car wins 95% of the time, usually timing based rather than cost.

 

[les.]

In the mid '70's when I was about 10 or 11. My family live in Grimsby but my brother, who is 11 years older than me, moved to London.

It was when there was a direct train from Grimsby to London and Mum used to put me on the train at Grimsby and then ring my brother and tell him which carriage I was on and he'd meet me off the train at Kings Cross. Did this regularly and Mum used to try and find a family or someone responsible who was on the same train who would keep an eye on me!

 

[AJM580]

Norwich - Yarmouth with 37036 in 1983 (back behind 31261). Summer Saturday move

 

[swt class 450]

This makes me feel so old! I was 8 years old when i started to travel on my own on the trains. I used the train every day to get to and from School from the age of 8 onwards. When i was 10 years old was when i started going on more train rides as a hobby (usually for a few hours after school). I remember at the weekends i used to spend the whole day going on train rides all over the south east. This was all back in the days of slam door DMUs and EMUs and locomotive hauled trains!

 

[Oxfordblues]

From the age of just 9 my mother was quite happy for me to get the train alone from Lytham into Preston in the morning and spend all day trainspotting before coming home early in the evening. That was 1962. I know because I saw the last of the Princess Royal pacifics in service: they were all withdrawn by the autumn. She had no qualms about any misadventures that might befall me. Unthinkable nowadays!

 

[trainmania100]

On my own probably just a short journey from Preston park to Brighton
Then gradually getting longer and longer

 

[sprinterguy]

OMG, that was the day of my birth...hock:

Blimey, and there was I believing myself to be young.

 

[ATW Alex 101]

Capenhurst-Hooton-Ellesmere Port aged 10.

 

[fergusjbend]

Manchester Piccadilly to Crewe on the Pines Express, hauled by a Class 86. It reached 100mph, which was very unusual for the time - which must have been about 1966 or 67 - or have I got my dates wrong? I was travelling to Crewe to visit the engine shed, which still had many steam engines - Brits, Black Fives, even a couple of Crabs. Happy days.

 

[postye]

My first solo trip on a train would've been around age 10, probably between Surbiton and Clapham Junction.
Before that I had been out without adult supervision on Sunday's with my step brother and a friend Richmond-Willesden junction to try getting round Willesden and Old Oak Common sheds

 

[Temple Meads]

My first solo train trip was November 27th 2011, and I was 15, I did an FGW HST from Exeter to Newton Abbot, took a picture of the FGW Class 142 Farewell Tour coming off the Heathfield branch, then returned to Exeter to join the rest of the tour.

Subsequently did solo trips to Cardiff and Birmingham a couple of months later..

 

[47403]

Locally. I was about 10, I'd go from Newcastle-Seaburn and back, most weekends. My mates would go as far as York at about 13, every year older we got, we were allowed to travel a bit further.

I was around 18, when I went overnight to Crewe by myself, riding between Man Pic and Crewe on the 37/4s and the 86s and 87s, then I done mainly freedom of the north east before I had roughly a decade out the game not long after the trans pennine 47s stopped.

 

[AM9]

Probably late '50s from Ilford to Manor Park and back. On the original 1500VDC LNER 3-car EMUs pre conversion to ac AM6s.
After that it would have been on Twin Rover tickets (half-fare at 4s 3d). On various trips I managed to cover a large part of the Underground as it was then. I also got to the limits of the rover's validity at Watford (Met.) and Rickmansworth on both the compartment EMUs and the compartment LHCS respectively.

 

[edwin_m]

Manchester-Watford to stay with my grandmother. It must have been around 1974 (age 8 or 9) because I remember worrying about bombs. My dad put me on the train and my gran met me off it, though I think I had to find my own way from my seat to the door because the stop was so short.

 

[Bevan Price]

Must have been about 11. Used to go with a few other lads from Thatto Heath to either Wigan North Western or Edge Hill to watch trains, but occasionally went by myself if none of the others were available. Saw my first ex-LNER loco on one solo trip to Wigan - Class A1 60152 on the Glasgow - Birmingham service.

 

[james60059]

Back in the Summer of 1994 when I came home from London to Coventry after spending a few weeks of the school holidays with my Dad. As a bonus we were diverted to Nuneaton (because of engineering work I assume). Class 87 from Euston to Nuneaton then a Class 150 from Nuneaton to Coventry .

Funnily enough it was the one and only time I had to go via Nuneaton returning home to Coventry after spending various school holidays with my Dad in London.

Off topic, on one occasion we went from Coventry to London Paddington "for a spin" as my Dad put it, 47831 Bolton Wanderer providing the horses

 

[JBuchananGB]

Probably several shorter journeys before, but age 12, in 1965, Gidea Park to Uckfield, onward by Southdown 192 to Heathfield, because Beeching had closed the "Cuckoo" not long before.

 

[Calthrop]

For first rail journey alone, was older than some posters here, younger than others – was about thirteen and a half.

This had been for a while, a somewhat vexed matter between me and parental / in-loco-parentis units. Kids at an awkward and obnoxious age can tend to feel that their elders are seeking out all possible ways in which to ill-use their offspring; when in fact parents are usually only trying to follow what they feel is the right course, with an almost impossible task of trying to displease everyone as little as possible. When I was 12 / 13, there was friction between me and my mother (Dad had died a couple of years previously) about solo-rail-travel-or-not, for me. I being a railway enthusiast and familiar with the ins-and-outs of the system, considered myself perfectly capable of managing rail travel on my own. Mum was less sure, and talked theoretically of – should the occasion arise – putting me on the train “in charge of the guard”. I found this idea utterly humiliating / infantilising / setting-at-naught of my rail expertise -- not helped by the erroneous picture which I formed, of its involving my having to travel actually, uncomfortably, in the guard’s compartment along with baggage / crates / bikes / caged animals in transit.

Our worst such “bout” was in summer 1961, in the course of a holiday staying with relations near Chester. I had my heart set on the idea of -- during this spell -- making as a day-trip, a first-ever visit to the Ffestiniog Railway. Mum had originally seen this as possible, with her kindly driving us to Porthmadog and back, including a return trip on the FR. Various organisational “crap happened”, in part involving younger siblings, and she had to rescind the driving-there plan. I begged to be allowed to do the day trip by rail, solo (no alternative ways of achieving the objective, were available). I had it all figured out: North Wales Coast main line to Bangor, then to FR territory via Caernarfon and Afonwen, do the FR, and “same in reverse” – it would be simple. Mum took thought, but ended up veto-ing the idea -- no in-charge-of-guard measures considered, even. I, aged just thirteen, was furiously angry; but of course, such stuff happens in life. Some parents tend toward what others see as age-inappropriate over-protectiveness – one reckons that individual parents have to do as they feel that they must. In the end, it was another three years before I got to the Ffestiniog.

Family-type situations meant that not a long while thereafter, I spent a couple of years living with an uncle and aunt in Derby. At roughly thirteen and a half, I made my first solo rail journey, between Bishop’s Stortford where I was at boarding school, and Derby; via London including tube Liverpool Street – St. Pancras. With my uncle having made that journey with me at the beginning of that term, he reckoned me with my railways-awareness, savvy enough to do the trip, and others, in future on my own. Had no further solo-travelling issues with any of my “olds”.

 

[MrTurbostar170]

Age 15, going round on an Anglia Plus Day Ranger.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Bushey to Holloway Road via Euston and Kings Cross - aged 12 in 1970.

Explains my deep interest in the DC lines when I managed that North London area. Solo compartment as well , vandalised to hell.

 

[iantherev]

Aged 11 in 1973 from Aber to Cardiff Central for trainspotting purposes.

 

[mervyn72]

13 years old I think. After school on Friday to join my Mum and Nan in Bridlington. Started at my home town station Wakefield Westgate to Leeds and found out no trains to Hull due to broken down train. No mobile phone back then so no way of letting Mum know. I didn't really know what to do but overhead other passengers and followed them to customer services. They bunged about 20 of us into taxis to Selby then got a train to Hull and then Bridlington. All in all it was quite an adventure for the first time alone.

 

[pinkpanther]

February 1980. Bishop Auckland to Darlington, and within a few months I expanded onwards from there to York, Newcastle, Thornaby, Carlisle etc.

I started travelling solo when was 13, but by the time I was 15 I was going all over the country.

Most memorable? Probably the Deltic/40/pair of 27s Merrymaker from Newcastle to Perth, Inverness and Aberdeen in October 1981.

York Depot had just given her the silver grilles/fuel tank treatment, so Alycidon was absolutely *gleaming* at 5:30am in Newcastle. From Perth we had 27037 and 27029, from Inverness 40167, before Alycidon took over again at Aberdeen.

http://www.sixbellsjunction.co.uk/80s/811017b2.htm

https://www.flickr.com/photos/96915808@N03/14082083585
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jncarter1962/22621130829
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jncarter1962/8498092307