My name is Brian Forster, and I was born at 2 Railway Cottages, New Hartley, on 5th July 1942. I have stumbled across this thread about the Blyth Branch Line, and love it.
The cottage I was born in was where my Grandparents, Charles and Elizabeth Royce lived as workers for the LNER. Charlie was a Ganger Platelayer, and Elizabeth opened and closed the level-crossing gates.
My father, Cyril Forster, a Londoner, was in the army and based at a nearby camp, and met my mother Gladys Royce at the Hartley Workmen's Club in the village, married and sired me before shipping out to North Africa with the 1st army.
After he returned, in 1945, and trying to make a go of it, he and Mum gave up after the severe Winter of 1947, and moved to London,
I returned for my school holidays right up until about 1956, and had a close relationship to my Grandparents, until Elizabeth passed away in 1954. Charlie lived on for many more years.
My fondest memories are of him taking me on the train to Blyth, then onto the worker's Ferry which toured the shipyards. We would also go to the Blyth Markets, and have crab meat from a seafood stall.
Elizabeth (nee Johnston) had a brother, and perhaps other relatives in Newsham, and Charlie also had friends there. He would take me there on the train, and to a Lawn Bowls Club, where I learnt to play Dominoes with his old mates. They also taught me about the "bias" of a set of woods.
Each year I went to visit, Charlie would take me once to the Spanish City at Whitley Bay. We would get the train from New Hartley to Monkseaton, and walk down in the beach town. He was a wonderful man, and I retain a mental image of him hanging on to his Trilby hat as we hurtled down the Big-Dipper.
As the Railway Cottages were some way out of the Village of Hartley, there was a man called Shelly, who drove a horse and cart loaded with vegetable produce and bottles of "Pop". My favourite was Dandelion and Burdock.
I live in Sydney Australia now, but in 2009, aged 67, I returned to the UK to visit my ailing Mum, and take a road trip to my birthplace. The railway is gone now, but the cottage remains, albeit much modernised. The old Station-Master's House is also there, and I met and spoke with the owner. I told him I had spent my first 5 years and many subsequent youthful holidays running around the station. His son or daughter lives in the cottage I know and love so well, but she was not home, so I didn't get an opportunity to be invited in one last time.
Because of my bithplace, I have a lasting affinity with railways, especially steam, but I am now involved with the Sydney Heritage Fleet, where I am a Tour Guide aboard a 3-Masted Barque now called James Craig, but originally launched as Clan Macleod, from the Barttram and Haswell Shipyards, Sunderland in 1874. I can not let my roots go
