1948 to about 1958: Railways.
My local venue was Oxford. Walton Well Road, leading to Port Meadow, and on the north side of Oxford engine shed, where all steam activity went on. And Oxford station of course. Another favourite location was Surbiton station, a pleasant walk from my grandmother Penfold’s home at 90 Surbiton Road, Kingston. I didn’t fully realise it at the time, but I was witnessing the demise of steam, which had changed England irrevocably since it appeared on rails in 1825. Its glory days were over. In 1948 I was just in time to see and feel that I was part of (what I later discovered was the Atlee government’s) ‘Indian Summer’ of railway steam locos, post-World War II, under the chief engineer Riddles, whose ‘Brittania” class epitomised for young Oxford lad 'the glories of steam and technology and the way ahead.'