The United Kingdom is lucky to have many groups of railroad aficionados. They buy and restore old train engines (especially steam engines), railcars, rail lines, even old stations. The result is the chance for folks to have the opportunity to experience train travel as it was in another time. Today, I had the chance for one of those adventures.

As so many of my adventures do, this one involves an interesting coincidence. At several points in my Nuclear Regulatory Commission career, I came across a company called Amersham plc, that manufactured radiopharmaceutical products used in diagnostic and therapeutic nuclear medicine procedures. Before the company was sold to General Electric Healthcare in 2004, it had a major presence near Amersham, England. Amersham Train Station was the start and end point of my train antique rail journey today.

To the Metropolitan Line took me on a what was known as a “semi-fast” train from Kings Cross out to Amersham, the last stop on the line. It took me from the urban center of London through more suburban seeming towns and even some rather rural settings with large fields with horses and cows grazing. The journey took me through two towns that I have special memories of: Pinner, the setting of a 1980s British sitcom called “May to December,” and Watford (turnaround point for the antique train ride), where I saw my first live English Premier League Football match. Very memorable about the Watford football match was my inability to find the Tube station after the match and wandering around Watford endlessly, until I was finally able to describe a landmark a kind lady was able to point me to. I definitely got all my steps in that day!

The volunteers along with folks from the London Transport Museum made sure that the Amersham Train Station and the platform where the restored train would run were fully staffed with knowledgeable people to help us all have a good day. They also had several tables set up with all kinds of train memorabilia for serious collectors.

But, of course, the star of the day, was the train itself. The exterior had a certain nostalgic charm to it. I got a great chuckle when the gentleman standing next to me noted (in his Shefield accent) that there was

change the name from London Transport to (its current name) Transport for London). “Some new one came in and felt they had to make a change!” This fellow became my travel companion for the next hour or so and kept me delighted with his views on things. Back to the trains, the interior, as I hope you can see, had fairly comfortable seat, the moquette colors of a deep burgundy and blue with the green walls and the wooden trim around the windows and the wooden floor slats spoke of an early, perhaps more mannered time. Not a spot of graffiti, carved or written, was to be seen anywhere. We weren’t packed in so tightly that anyone had to use the overhead hangers to hold on either. My Sheffield friend had taken quite a few of the “Hidden London” tours of the Underground stations and he recommended them to me. In the course of his discussions, we slipped into talk of World War II museums and places of interest, and he had and interesting story about his 103-year-old uncle who had been a navigator in a bomber during the Battle of Britain. Being about the same age, we also both mused at how very young the boys who made the assault on Normandy, both by air and sea were and how, by contrast, we were very lucky to have not had to have been called to make such a sacrifice.

As the last picture above shows, this “stock” last ran on the London underground in 1988, but it did not stop running completely them. The last trains are still in service and just now getting ready to be retired on Isle of Wight off the South Coast of England, near Portsmouth and Southhampton.

After a 20-minute stop at Watford Train Station, we made our return trip to Amersham and, as luck would have it, I was able to catch another “semi fast” train back into King’s Cross before things closed up for the day on Sunday. All in all, it was a trip worth taking and it lessened the sting of my Fulham All Whites falling short of the mark this weekend, but Fulham’s goal scoring machine Aleksandar “Mitro” Mitrovic^‘ did score a goal in the effort against Harry Kane and the Tottenham Hotspur.

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