[BITList] To all trainspotters !

[Michael Feltham]

The invention of trainspotting
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The publisher Ian Allan <http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2004/feb/15/magazine.features7> died this week, aged 92. It would be wrong to say that he invented the railway hobby – that began with gentleman enthusiasts in the 19th century. His achievement was to spread it among hundreds of thousands of schoolboys by turning them into trainspotters. A cheap pastime, ideal for its era: his first booklet of engine numbers was published in 1942. There were shortages of everything then, from bananas to cricket bats, but plenty of engines to pursue and, when seen, to underscore in the list.

Later he published lists of everything that moved: buses, cars, aircraft and ships. I was more of a ship boy myself, though I notice from my ABC of Coastal Ships, which I’ve just exhumed in his honour, that I saw surprisingly few. It made Allan very rich. He and the Rev Wilbert Awdry, Thomas the Tank Engine’s inventor, probably made as much money as George Stephenson. There was a lot of profit in boys.

The invention of trainspotting
Advertisement

The publisher Ian Allan <http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2004/feb/15/magazine.features7> died this week, aged 92. It would be wrong to say that he invented the railway hobby – that began with gentleman enthusiasts in the 19th century. His achievement was to spread it among hundreds of thousands of schoolboys by turning them into trainspotters. A cheap pastime, ideal for its era: his first booklet of engine numbers was published in 1942. There were shortages of everything then, from bananas to cricket bats, but plenty of engines to pursue and, when seen, to underscore in the list.

Later he published lists of everything that moved: buses, cars, aircraft and ships. I was more of a ship boy myself, though I notice from my ABC of Coastal Ships, which I’ve just exhumed in his honour, that I saw surprisingly few. It made Allan very rich. He and the Rev Wilbert Awdry, Thomas the Tank Engine’s inventor, probably made as much money as George Stephenson. There was a lot of profit in boys.
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