The first Old Fart’s railcard adventure

In early May, an author friend, Terry Tyler, mentioned getting a third off the cost of her rail tickets using a special rail card for the over-sixties. Entering the seventh decade of life doesn’t have too many benefits, so I thought I’d investigate. After a quick discussion with Commando and a simple online process, I was the proud owner of a sparkly new Senior Railcard. Actually, it’s an app on your smartphone, not a physical card, although you can order one if you wish. Having shelled out the princely sum of £30 each, we thought we’d better get our money’s worth, so on 7 May, we took our Senior Railcards on a trial run.

Not wishing to overstretch our finances or our brains, we made our first outing short and sweet. We toddled the seven hundred yards or so to our local station, Bitterne. After a short tussle with the automatic ticket machine and a payment of less than a single bus fare to town, we had two return tickets to Southampton Central Station in our hands. As simple as that!

While I waited for Commando to buy his ticket, I admired the lovely wildflower garden growing on the sloped bank beneath the railway bridge. The old station approach has certainly had a facelift since I last visited. A group of people were working in the little garden, and of course, I got chatting with one of them. It turns out they’re part of a group called Friends Of Bitterne Station. Not only do they keep everything looking spruce, but they also hold all sorts of events. What an amazing bunch of people! 

Back in the mists of time, when I had less than two decades under my belt, I was very familiar with Bitterne Station. When I left college, my first full-time job was with British Rail. One of the perks was a rail pass for my daily commute. There were no wildflower gardens or automatic ticket machines back then. Each morning, I’d dash down the hill and go through the door into the ticket office to be greeted by the station manager. In my memory, he is a rather jolly man, dark-haired and quite old. Truth to tell, he was probably only in his late twenties or early thirties, but to a teenager, he seemed positively ancient. He was useful, too, providing up-to-date information on the correct platform, delays, weather issues, onward travel advice and even the odd comment on local news. I always imagined he lived in the station house, next door to the ticket office, but I may have been wrong.

Sadly, station managers are a thing of the past now. All but the largest railway stations are unmanned. Waiting rooms and ticket offices have become automatic ticket machines and bench or bus stop-type shelters on the platform if you’re lucky. For unseasoned travellers and nervous young girls trying to pretend they know what they’re doing, it’s a sad loss. Still, the station house looked rather nice, with painted flowers, a cat, and a mouse in the bricked-up windows to amuse us while we waited for our train.

Luckily for Commando, I knew we had to cross the footbridge to catch our train. How many mornings did I dash across this old bridge as the train passed under the road bridge? I’m pretty sure it’s the same bridge today. In fact, looking at old photographs, I wonder if it is the original bridge erected when the station opened in May 1866.

My memories of the station go back much further than those mad morning dashes to work and the evenings coming home and plodding back up the hill, though. Back in the early 1960s, I often went for walks with my grandfather, Thomas John Haley, affectionately known as Pappy. One of our favourites included a stop on the road bridge. He would sit me on the wall, and we’d wait for trains, trying to guess if the next would be steam or diesel. I always hoped it would be steam. Sometimes, if I was very lucky, we’d take a walk around the corner to Macnaughten Road to visit my Uncle Doug and Auntie Babs.

The days of steam trains are long gone, as are my aunt and uncle. In fact, a great deal has changed on my little local station. Announcements are made by disembodied voices instead of friendly station managers who don’t mind repeating things or offering helpful suggestions. The signal box has gone too. Such things are now all controlled remotely by some kind of electrical magic. They have replaced the fancy wooden shelters with swish metal affairs, probably easier to maintain but surely not as comfortable.

Our train arrived on time, and we were soon speeding towards Southampton. We amused ourselves by spotting all the landmarks I remember from those long-ago journeys. The River Itchen looked very different from the railway bridge we usually see as we cross Cobden Bridge. We passed over the Priory Road bridge I walked under on my way to work at the Bus Mines a few years back and the level crossing on Adelaide Road, where my maternal grandparents once rented a room. Onwards, through St Denys Station and under Horseshoe Bridge, we went. Then we got another glimpse of the river as we trundled past the boardwalk. We almost missed the level crossing at Mount Pleasant before whooshing under the Northam railway bridge and turning right at St Mary’s Stadium and Melbourne Street, where my mother grew up. Under the Six Dials bridge, past the backs of the shops on Old Northam Road, then through the long tunnel beneath our central parks, and our journey was almost over.

It was almost a disappointment to arrive at platform three of Southampton Central Station and get off the train. Our short journey was not just to try our new railcards. For five years, I worked at the Data Input Centre in Overline House, and the view from my office window was of a set of rather unattractive concrete buildings called Grenville House, Frobisher House and Nelson Gate. In the mid-1970s, this large office block was fairly new. To the best of my knowledge, most of the offices were empty. There was a pub on the ground floor called The Victory, but my colleagues and I avoided it, preferring the Tom Tackle around the corner on Commercial Road. This was where barmaid Teresa De Simone was murdered in 1979, so maybe we’d have been better off in the Victory, despite its reputation.

The design of these office blocks may have been influenced by Wyndham Court, the 1960s-built brutalist council block opposite. Some people love this style of architecture, but I can’t say I’m a fan. Concrete has its place, but when it comes to buildings, I find it too stark and grey, and it certainly doesn’t age as well as stone or brick. Not that Overline House is exactly pretty.

Over the last few weeks, we’d been watching Facebook posts about a transformation to the stark concrete buildings. The daily progress photographs of the ‘clean air’ mural painted with CO2 absorption paint looked interesting. Despite some controversy over how the paint worked and whether it continued absorbing CO2 once it was dry, the bright mural designed by French street artist Nerone looked like a vast improvement.

Our first Old Farts Railcard adventure was short and sweet. We admired the new mural, took a few photographs and stopped for a coffee and a cake before dashing to Platform 3b to catch the next train back to good old Bitterne. On the way home, we talked about all the other adventures we could have on the railway using our new cards, and the advantages of not having to drive or find a parking space. So, what’s the catch, I hear you ask? Cost-wise, there really isn’t one. A handful of train journeys will soon recoup the initial outlay, and our journey to town was far cheaper than either the bus or parking charges. We are lucky enough to have a railway station within walking distance, admittedly a little further than the bus stop, but by no means a taxing walk. With just one train an hour from Bitterne, it’s not quite as convenient as the bus or the car and involves a bit more forward planning, but I’m quite looking forward to having more adventures by train.

If you have reached your seventh decade and would like a Senior railcard, all the information is available here. I’m so glad my author friend, Terry Tyler, mentioned it, and if you’re wondering about her, this is where you can find her books. Be warned, though, not only is she a mine of useful information, but she writes the kind of books you can’t put down. You may become addicted. 

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