It is a grey and misty day in December 1950. A small crowd of people line the ramp that leads down from the Hexthorpe Bridge to the platform of St James' Bridge station. All of them are looking in the same direction and an air of expectancy pervades the chilly winter air. As they watch, a train comes bowing under Balby Bridge. The engine is black, but is very well polished. As ever, its expression is one of cheerful self-satisfaction, almost smug, though this is a melancholy occasion, and it has a slightly comical toddling gait as, with steam shut off, it nears Doncaster station. As it rolls past, the onlookers note with surprise that the tender is lined out (as it was borrowed from a "ragtimer" specially for the day) and one of the builder's plates, the famous "soup plates" of later years, has been chrome-plated and glitters in unaccustomed splendour. H G Ivatt is on the train and within a few minutes this beautiful plate will be unbolted from the engine and presented to the son of its designer at Doncaster station. The last Ivatt atlantic, 62822, has come home, and from now on that chattering chirrup which long epitomised the East Coast Main Line will be a thing of the past. I was determined to have some souvenir of the end of a truly glorious era and though the builder's plates would not be available - I wonder who had the other one - I asked for, and obtained, the smokebox number plate. It seemed a bit mundane at the time but over fifty years later I can see that it really is a treasure beyond price.

This time it is a hot and sunny day in August and I hang out of the carriage window, watching our elegant engine as it swings this way and that on an unusually tortuous Devon branch-line. Buzzards watch our progress as they sit on line-side fence posts and with a keen sense of delight I fulfil yet another long-held ambition, not just to see the redoubtable Adams radial tanks but to travel behind one between Axminster and Lyme Regis. I don't think I ever asked for a builder's plate from one of these charismatic 4-4-2 tanks; it was incredibly difficult to persuade the Southern Region to part with the goodies one so much wanted.

A small boy stands on the cattle dock at Doncaster, later to become a regular haunt, the scene of several amusing adventures and occasionally slightly gruesome ones, like the episode of the huge boar found in a cattle truck with paralysed hind quarters. It was extricated with difficulty and summarily despatched on the spot, a thoroughly gory business. That lay in the future, though, and is not the point of this anecdote. As the boy watches, a train from Leeds to Doncaster emerges from under the North Bridge. It is hauled by two identical engines, whose long connecting rods swing grandly back and forth. The engines are black and none too clean, but what a vision of sweeping, noble curves they present! Old they may be, having seen some forty arduous years by that time, but their splendid proportions mark them out as real aristocrats. This was perhaps my first sight of a pair of "Imminghams". It is just possible that one of them may have been a B18, but that is unlikely, as the two pioneer Robinson 4-6-0s were not based in the West Riding. I did succeed in getting hold of a builder's plate from a B4 - it may even be from one of the two engines that made such a profound impression all those years ago - and it is, of course greatly prized, a Beyer Peacock off GCR 1096.

1952's was a patchy sort of summer, a bit like the one we have just endured in 2002. An elderly Doncaster antiquarian had asked me if I would like to visit North Wales with him, so there we were bumping and grinding along behind "Dolgoch" on a reasonable sort of day. The line was just like a grassy cart-track and indeed it was the vegetation that was largely responsible for keeping the rails in place. Branches and brambles whipped in through the open carriage window, as our gallant little engine wheezed and chuntered along. "Tal-y Llyn" was complete but derelict and the two Corris machines had yet to enter the fray. We managed the entire journey in both directions without a derailment, something of a feat in those early days of the railway's preservation and, back at Towyn Wharf station, I persuaded Tom Rolt to give me a short piece of rail and both patterns of TR rail chair. Magic!

We stood at the end of the platform at Paddington in a state of heady excitement, temporarily seduced from our right and proper allegiance to the LNER/BR(ER) by the brass-bound visions that surrounded us, marvelling at the ferocity of their barking, or amused by the quaintly flatulent sounds that they sometimes gave vent to. Under the great bridge a different outline appeared. Flat-sided cylinders, yes, but slighter than a "Castle", and the chimney seemed a bit taller too. There was scarcely time to take in the rather gaunt and spartan cab and to read the great arched nameplate "Prince George" as the locomotive swung haughtily past. It was not very clean, but what presence it had! I had seen a "Star" before, and, most fortunately, was privileged to see some others, but this was the first one I had actually seen in motion. Some months later, with the same companions, I visited Coleham shed at Shrewsbury, and there at home, quietly simmering - and still not very clean - was old 4044 "Prince George". That clinched it; I had to have a nameplate. A line to Mr Dymond at Swindon Works stores and in due course a nameplate from "Prince George" was delivered to Doncaster Grammar School. A few shillings well spent, methinks. Other long-standing collectors will share in the remembrance of those blissful days - seeing an engine, falling under its spell, asking for the nameplate and then the excitement when it arrived, wrapped in its scruffy old sack. One sometimes saw them on platform barrows, addressed to some lucky collector whose name might become familiar years later. I remember seeing one from a very early "Saint", one of the Scott's novels series, though I can no longer remember which one it was, nor the station on which it was enjoying a temporary sojourn.

Manor Farm at Rossington, where I was on the humped GNR bridge that I had adopted as my own and where I spent so many happy hours watching - and, just as exciting - listening to the LNER's principal express engines, including 4470 "Great Northern", just another Gresley pacific to me, as I had not reached the advanced stage of being able to distinguish between A1s and A3s. On this afternoon, ambling along, came a monstrously attenuated pacific, its chimney an uncompromising double stove-pipe and its cylinders apparently most oddly placed behind the bogie. It was painted ultramarine blue and I did not know at the time, of course, that this was E.T.'s homage to the Great Eastern, at whose Stratford works he had perhaps enjoyed some of his happiest years and where he had been largely responsible for two supremely successful rebuilds of GER engines in the B12 and the D16. 4470 was not quite fresh out of works, as the ridiculously short cab skirts with which she first appeared had already been altered, so that the cab was once again standard Gresley. While being unaware of the circumstances of this rather ugly engine's birth, I was not impressed by what I saw shuffling past me with characteristic Kylchap sizzle. Not yet a budding aesthete, I still felt that this locomotive somehow did not look quite right but, looking back over the gulf of years, I am glad to have had the opportunity to see the second "Great Northern" in the days of its youth.

On our bikes, we had zoomed down to the Plant works gates in Kirk Street, a place of almost daily pilgrimage. There was always a small group of engines just out of the paint shop and how wonderful they looked, whatever their livery! The new liveries had recently been introduced and freshly minted A1s were already appearing in an approximation to Caledonian blue. On this day, we were astonished to see "Hush-Hush" standing before us in all its splendour - and in dark green. But it was an express engine! Express engines of the first rank were to be painted blue. There could be no mistake, though, for every inch of the giant streamliner was visible - fourteen wheels and the number 60700 as plain as could be on the cabside. The mind's eye sees it bathed in afternoon sunshine, but it may have been a grey day. Then the mistake was discovered; it had been painted in the wrong colour, presumably because it had been missed off the list and the paint-shop foreman had used his initiative - and got it wrong. After an hour or so's exposure, it was shunted back into the paint shop and a few days later reappeared in the correct blue. It must have been an expensive mistake, though. A year or two later, the decree went forth that express engines were to be green and "Hush-Hush" became dark green once more. We were very lucky to see it painted in "the wrong colour" and this circumstance entirely escaped the notice of the most watchful commentators. There was no mention in the "Railway Observer" and Willie Yeadon's locomotive register makes no mention either. Later on, 60700 had a narrow escape from disaster at Peterborough and, when it was called into the works for the last time, I was able to purchase the smokebox number plate, one of the few relics available from this notable locomotive, though somebody will have the chime whistle I don't doubt. When it was built at Darlington, 10000 had 9" x 5" builder's plates, carried on the front side sheets. These were disposed of at the time of rebuilding, for "proper" streamliners did not have 9" x 5" plates, a typical example of LNER inconsistency.

So there you are, just a little dip into a bran-tub full of wonderful memories, with mention of a few of the treasured relics associated with some of those memories.

How heartily I endorse Graeme Parmley's remarks in RCJ 122! I think that the importance of having a second hobby is paramount. I have been a bus enthusiast at least as long as I have been a railway enthusiast and both interests go back as far as I can remember. As the auction scene offers far more disappointment than it once did, I can at least obtain some solace from the ownership of two exceptionally beautiful historic double-deckers, both of them famous throughout the old vehicle movement and both of them likewise particularly successful on the rally scene. As it happens, at the time of writing I found myself double-booked, having forgotten to put down the date of the September Myers Grove auction in my diary. My first reaction was to think that missing Sheffield was impossible to contemplate. But then I asked myself why it was impossible to contemplate. There were a few items on offer that I would dearly like to add to the Doncaster collection, yet the likelihood was that I would not be able to afford any of them, so why not obviate the inevitable disappointment and go to the Gainsborough rally instead? A new venue to me, 300 old vehicles present last year and, apart from the weather, little possibility of disappointment. Having taken the plunge this once, perhaps I shall henceforth be able to envisage not attending auctions with greater equanimity and perhaps I am getting too old for stress anyway.

It was brave of Tim to tackle finials. [Ed. Not brave, foolhardy. It was done in the sure and certain hope that somebody like TP would expand upon it. Honest.] There is a picture of an L&YR "Dreadnought" in the latest copy of "Backtrack". Behind the 4-6-0, which is standing at Squires Gate station, is an L&YR signal of the earlier standard pattern with a very strange spire-shaped finial. I think it is probably just the cast-iron base of an old-pattern L&YR finial that has lost its banded wooden ball and spike, though it took me some time to reach this conclusion. There are some comments on the basic pattern of L&YR signal finials below, and I don't think this one is really an aberration. With reference to Tim's finial article, not all GCR finials had an open-ended spike with oak plug. On two distinct patterns the spike's culmen was integral. We have six different types of GCR finial at Doncaster, including an all-wooden example from New Holland. We also have a superb MS&LR example, which came from the D L Franks collection. As on the NSR pattern that Tim mentions, the collar below the orb is faceted and this feature is diagnostic on MS&LR finials. There is an incredible range of anomalies and exceptions amongst signal finials. On the Furness, for instance, apart from the flat-topped "cushion" pattern that Tim mentions, amongst other varieties, there were some Stevens specimens with much more delicate detailing than the norm. The tall arrowhead spike which Tim mentions in connection with the GER and Lynton & Barnstaple and which was an E O'D/Saxby production, had a variant where the vanes were solid and not fretted. This variant was in use on the South Yorkshire Junction (H&BR) and a fine example crowns a signal from this line in the Doncaster collection. As well as the cruciform "onion" mentioned in the article, the L&YR also used a composite ball and spike with cast iron base and wooden ball and spike. This came in at least two sizes and its use seems to have been contemporaneous with that of the wholly cast-iron pattern, though I believe that the actual design was much earlier.

Only the GWR seems to have had a problem with box-shaped finial bases on concrete posts. The Midland employed a rectangular box-base and this seems to have been satisfactory, like the CLC one. On the GNR and LNER possible problems were averted by the introduction of a concrete cap, much less elaborate than the lipped L&NWR/LNER types with shallow, sloping top. We have a nice example of this concrete cap at Doncaster and I rather suspect that there are not many of these around. Although the Dutton's "Addams Family" rather sinister finial did appear here and there on the Cambrian, most Cambrian Railways signals had a very austere cap with quite sharp edges, a much simplified version of the L&NWR pattern.

Referring to the "Overview" article on wagon plates, there was a back-up in case the wagon registration plate was lost, and most private owner wagons with wooden solebars had the wagon number inscribed on the solebar, though it was sometimes covered by a plate of one sort or another. As I have mentioned before in this column, the LNER's utility pressed-steel wartime number plates with their indented corners were effectively a revival of one of the patterns used by the NER, likewise in pressed-steel, though smaller, cheaper in appearance and less carefully made.

Naturally I had a good sniff around the LD&ECR's Market Place station in Chesterfield before it was demolished, but do not know whether the items that I found appear in the Little Midland Society's list, though for years I have enjoyed honorary membership of this society. I did recover a beautiful piece of etched glass "Gentlemen" and a small cast-iron plate from a hoist. The only other item I rescued was an LNER office chair, branded underneath the seat cushion. Many visitors to The Tower have sat on this chair without knowing of its origin. Otherwise our LD&ECR items are the usual ones: trespass notice, B of T notice, rail chairs, fire bucket bracket (with GER bucket recovered from the line), signal lever (of GCR pattern) and some wonderful rare enamels, including a running-in board. We also have a clock face (external) from a clock that migrated to Staveley Central, but may be the one that was once at Boughton. This last station also provided a small hoard of LD&ECR paperwork, bits of which surface in auction from time to time. A 9" x 5" plate from an LD&ECR 0-6-4T is known to exist and this may be the only surviving locomotive relic from the "Coast to Coast". I remember leaving a GCR trespass notice near one of the abutments of Horns Bridge viaduct as it was too common to bother with!

Finally I had the real pleasure of a phone call from that famous collector of GWR paper items, Mr R King-Bird. He was able to confirm my hunch about the pre-war price of GWR nameplates, having been taken round the works in the late 1920s, when he was shown the building where nameplates from scrapped locomotives were stored. He remembers seeing nameplates from the Churchward "County" 4-4-0s, noted for their very lively ride. The price of such nameplates was seven shillings and sixpence and he was told that unsold examples would eventually be melted down, though the Gordon Coltas photographs, mentioned in RCJ 121, do suggest that plates lingered on for a long time at Swindon. Would that all those wonderful "ringers" were still with us today!