Steam, tears and nostalgia

Gaz webber

Dogsey Senior

Location: Coventry

Joined: Jun 2005

Posts: 966

07-04-2009, 08:22 PM

Steam, tears and nostalgia

Try and imagine the excitement of a little boy, aged 8, as he sits on the arm rest in the middle of the back seat of a Vanden Plas 4 Litre R.
He, his 4 year old brother and his Dad are on their way from Lewes to The Royal Show, in Stoneleigh (sadly soon to be a thing of the past...) and this was the first time either boy had been so far from home. They'd got up early, for here they were in a sleepy village called Radford Semele, just outside Leamington Spa, and it was yet to turn 9am.

Suddenly the older lad saw, in a garden of a big Tudor house a bizarre sight. Sat on the lawn was a steam roller. Not a road roller, and not a steam engine, but a genuine Steam Roller. A frisson of excitement ran down the lad's neck. This was not just bizarre, it was MAGICAL!

And then, they were past, and it was gone. But it made an impression on the lad. For the next year he, and the younger brother, remembered, and lo, the steam engine was there again! And this was the older lad's 9th birthday. And on his 10th, yet again, the engine sat on the lawn.

In 1971, the engine was gone. The two lads, and their dad, were heartbroken. That engine was part of the magic of the Royal Show. Part of the fun. Part of *them* in some way...the show was never quite the same again...

Fast forward, then, to 2009.

The lad, now all growed up, has moved to Coventry and is driving towards Canley from the city centre, when he happens on a steamroller, chugging away down the road, with L plates on, no less. He overtakes, and when he sees a gap he pulls in, and leaps out, camera in hand, to record the sight. In front of him a boiler-suited gent alights from a Landrover, camera in hand.

*Two minds with but a single thought!* says the lad, nodding to the camera. "Yes," replies the old chap. "Only...I own it. It has been in Coventry Transport Museum, where it has been completey rebuilt. This is it's first run under its own steam (haha) since the early 70s. And now it is going home!"

*That's great!* I said, for the young lad was me, and I told the tale of the old steam engine in the garden at Radford Semele.
The chap gave me an odd look.

"Yes, it did vanish in 1970. Well, the end of 1969. Do you know why? I bought it. And this is it's first trip out since"

I got a bit of a lump in my throat. That machine coughing and belching on the road, rumbling along the tarmac. That was the self-same machine that made we want to learn to drive a steam engine. And everything else. That machine, that very machine...