Martin Taylor

Brought up in the Tyne Valley, Martin’s interest in railways began at a very early age when he was taken to Newcastle station as a wide-eyed toddler to meet his dad from work and watching all manner of different locomotives and DMUS shuffling about the station.

He lists his earliest memories as being taken to the National Railway Museum at York, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway and Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, and to places like Carlisle to see steam specials coming through.

As Martin reached his teens, with the added benefit of a staff travel pass and a handed-down Canon AE1, he saved his pocket money and paper round wages to trot about the country a bit, going on the train to far-flung places such as Westbury, Aviemore, Crewe and Blackpool, sometimes travelling solo and sometimes with his dad, whom he credits for getting him into railways, as well as accompanying the wanderings around Ayr Depot in the mid-1990s, and also for paying to develop numerous rolls of 400asa film for his snap-happy train nut son!

Like many enthusiasts, Martin always wanted a career on the railway, but getting the ‘foot in the door’ was the difficult part. His ambition finally happened at the beginning of 2008 when he became the fourth generation of his family to get a job on the railway, each generation having done different things.

He admits he is now fortunate in being able to class his hobby as his job, and Martin has had the opportunity to meet some fantastic people and planning trains in numerous capacities. His highlights include working on a Borders Railway project in Scotland alongside those building it, delivering the engineering trains, organising training days at heritage railways to further the knowledge of train planners, overseeing the delivery and resourcing of charter trains for many wellknown companies, and working as part of a larger team on the ‘real-time’ railway, where no two days are ever the same.

Martin also volunteered at the Bo’ness & Kinneil Railway for five years from 2006 to 2011, before a move to Milton Keynes for work made it impractical to continue his volunteering on the Scottish heritage line, but he says that he enjoyed every minute of his time at the B&KR, making many friends and enjoying lots of laughter, spending freezing cold nights in the sleeper coach and providing him with a grounding in railways, giving him experience of the operational side of the railway.

Leaning more towards the modern traction scene as a preference, and not being a person who falls into either the ‘EE’ or ‘Sulzer’ camps exclusively, Martin did not grow up with an affinity to one particular class of locomotive which is often a source of light-hearted mirth from the bashing scene.

Martin says that in more recent years – and with the railways becoming an increasingly sterile place without the variety there once was – he has enjoyed the things that are bucking the trend every so often and have led to a return of locomotive haulage and brought some classic locomotives that should have long retired from the frontline service numerous times around the country. North Wales, the Cardiff Valleys, Cumbrian Coast, Anglia and the Lamington Viaduct closure are a few examples where locomotive haulage made a return appearance. Nowadays, Class 68s mainly hold his interest as a regular on the Transpennine Express route, and he had travelled behind all 34 Class 68s by May 2018. Being involved in the planning and delivery of charters at the time allowed Martin the chance to enjoy Class 68s to such bizarre places as Llandrindod, Carmarthen, Dundee, Margate and Reddish South!

Martin considers himself lucky to have got to know hundreds of people through the hobby, both those who are still with us and who are now sadly not. He has even managed to bump into ‘railway people’ completely unplanned during trips to Fort William and Portugal with his partner.

Martin would like to make special mention in this 10 Pictures feature of Raymond Rourke, the well-known North East photo and videographer, to whom he is indebted for information and days out in the late 1990s to mid-2000s before he died. He is also grateful to Tony Kay, DRS driver, Kingmoor Pirate and an ‘all-round top bloke’, whose knowledge and sharp wit in equal measures is also much missed. Two like-minded enthusiasts gone before their time.

These are Martin Taylor’s 10 Pictures.