Everything You Need To Know About "Bashing"
The main theme on this site is "bashing". So the first thing we need to establish is what are we talking about here?
Some things bashing is not:-
 | Trainspotting! |
| Anything to do with physical violence |
Some things that bashing is, or to be accurate was:-
| Unpredictable |
| Difficult! |
| Satisfying when things were going well |
| Frustrating when things were not going so well |
| A world totally cut off from most other members of society, almost like a secret club |
Most people understand what trainspotting is. This is the perfectly harmless pastime of standing around watching trains and taking down their numbers. The objective being to see as many different trains as possible, and this is recorded via marking in a book that contains all the numbers. This hobby can be enhanced through taking pictures etc.
Bashing evolved from trainspotting and is the upmarket "bells and whistles" version of it. Bashers all started as trainspotters but quickly realized that simply seeing engines was in fact rather easy. So the objective moved from simply seeing engines to travelling behind them. This is very much more difficult as you will see......
Most passengers pay little attention to their train other than whether it is on time or under the current British system of train operating whether it turns up at all (that is another story).
This site is concerned with the period before rationalisation, sectorisation and finally privatisation did away with variety.
And variety is what we had in terms of locomotives on passenger trains.
| Some types of engine worked passenger trains regularly, some worked occasionally, and some worked almost never. |
| Some types of engine were in the process of being withdrawn. |
| Some types of engine made a wonderful noise.. others just sounded like tractors... |
| Some types of engine were reliable and others weren't |
There were three basic motivations for bashing:-
- As stated before an upmarket version of trainspotting where the objective was to travel behind as many different locomotives as possible - marking them in a book as this was achieved. These bashers were known as "line in the book merchants".
- Travelling behind a particularly favourite type of engine e.g.: Westerns, Class 40, Deltics etc with the objective of covering as much mileage as possible with these engines. These bashers were known as "mileage men".
- As per 2 but with emphasis more on different routes behind a particular type of engine.
- A mixture of the above.
What Made Bashing Special?
Firstly, bashers got to know as much about the inner workings of the railway as the people that ran it (and in some cases rather more).
Secondly, bashers got to go all over the country, and between us we can name a decent pub and somewhere to get something to eat for under a fiver in virtually every town in Britain (bit out of date now mind).
Thirdly, bashing inevitably was very dynamic - the most interesting engines and routes involved summer Saturday only trains, excursions, charters, mail trains, overnight sleepers etc. None of these services run on the current rail system, so not only have the engines gone but so have the services too.
Finally, the satisfaction was entirely personal. Bashing was for fun, private, and no one was keeping any score except for the individual.
So if you would like to learn a little more about the pursuit click on the link below. Alternatively if you want to check out information on the locos first go there.