CHUFFING BRILLIANT

PAUL ROUTLEDGE MARKS THE BICENTENARY OF THE WORLD'S FIRST PUBLIC RAILWAY

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LOCO: Paul Routledge POWER: Kestrel, a diesel HOBBY: Boys get glimpse of passing train in 1952

VETERAN journalist Paul Routledge has enjoyed a lifelong passion for trains and has enchanting memories of the boyhood trainspotting that launched his railway mania.

He celebrates the “iron road” in his new book For the Love of Trains and says: “As a railwayman’s son I am chuffed to write a book in celebration of trains for the bicentenary year of the world’s first public railway. Covering every aspect from the Victorian railway mania, the heyday and end of steam, the railway at war and my boyhood passion of trainspotting, to the triumph and debacle of HS1 and HS2.”

Paul fell in love with trains as a young lad. He says: “You could always find us on the end of the platform, sitting on a porter’s ironwheeled goods barrow. With a biro and notebook in one hand and a bottle of pop in the other, we looked expectantly down the line.