Come with us, please Sir

In the mid 1970's, my Railway Interests were mainly OO gauge, but I still had the occasional day out on the "big railway", and Saturday trips to Birmingham New Street were fairly regular. I usually travelled by train from either Knowle & Dorridge or Solihull stations, and spent the morning and part of the afternoon recording in detail the comings and goings of the principal Express Passenger services.

And so it was that on a February Saturday morning in 1975, I found myself walking down platform 1, towards the Monument Lane end of the station. Something that I had been doing quite often since the start of my trainspotting days in 1950.

Suddenly I felt each of my arms firmly gripped. "Come with us, please", was the order that I received from two hefty looking individuals, who announced that they were the Railway Police. My requests for an explanation went unheeded, and it was with considerable embarrassment that I was marched through the crowds in the station, to the Railway Police offices nearby.

Tell us who you are, and explain precisely what you were doing on the station.. Trainspotting. I handed them my notes which included the arrival and departure times of about a dozen or so of the Express passenger services that I had seen, together with the locomotive number, name, number of coaches for each.

They still seemed reluctant to accept my explanation.

Where have you come from?. I travelled by train from Solihull station. How did you get there?. I drove from my home and parked my car in the Solihull station car park. What type of car, and what is the registration number. Blue Sunbeam Alpine soft top etc.

At this point, they rang Solihull station, and ordered the booking office clerk to go to the car park to check whether the car I had described was in fact parked in the car park. After about 30 minutes, he rang back confirming that it was.

At last, I thought, I shall be free.

But no. Can you prove that you are who you say you are?. From my wallet I produced my "Institute of Chartered Accountants Membership Card". This they took away to photocopy, and to use for the purpose of confirming that I was indeed a member of the body concerned. It seemed unlikely to me that they would have been able to do so on a Saturday morning.

After a further half hour or so, I was told that I could now go. I requested information as to why I had effectively been arrested and questioned. They declined to reply.

It was only on the journey home later in the day, that I realized what it had all been about. And I should have known.

February 1975 was only a few months after the horrendous "Pub Bombings" that took place in central Birmingham. And indeed many public places had been subject to high security in the ensuing months.

And that was my only ever "brush with the law". So far anyway.