ON THE FOOTPLATE

One of the highlights of our weekly visits to Salisbury station as young train spotters in the mid-1960s was being allowed up into the generous cab of a Merchant Navy or West Country. These were precious moments, all the more so as we knew we would all too soon have to return to the platform before the Bulleid Pacific, often amidst ferocious bouts of slipping, eased its express away towards Exeter or Waterloo.

It would be a few years before I started riding steam locomotives. I now no longer remember my first footplate trip but one of the earliest nearly put me off the whole experience. Staying at the famous Gasthof Gruber in Vordenberg Markt in Austria in late August 1973, I took the early morning passenger train as far as Erzberg to photograph the iron ore trains being loaded. This turned out to be a decision that was less than inspired photographically. As there were three or four hours to wait before the return passenger and it was raining heavily, I was glad when the driver of no. 197.301, the first of the three 0-12-0RTs designed by Gölsdorf in 1912, offered me a ride back to the summit station at