Ask anyone who was a teenage railway enthusiast in the 1980s and they will regale you with tales of ‘bunking’ engine sheds or locomotive works. While many depot foremen would happily allow youngsters to wander their shed buildings and yards to admire the locomotives stabled there, others would take great pleasure in chasing us away. This meant that some depots could only be accessed by clambering through holes in fences or thick clumps of brambles, while constantly keeping a lookout for shed staff.

We travelled the country visiting sheds from Inverness to Plymouth and were always ultra-cautious, keeping off running lines; all we were interested in was loco numbers and taking photographs. Occasional shed open days meant interesting motive power from other regions, and the most memorable events were probably when the larger BR Engineering works such as Swindon or Doncaster threw open their doors.

This book shows all aspects of such visits from our youth.