Steve Oates on the platform at Havenstreet. On the train behind are Mike Lightbown, left, and Steve Smart, right, in the cab.
Wight LivingWHAT do you want to be when you grow up, Steve?
For Steve Oates, chairman of the IW Steam Railway, the question was answered when he was 13 years old — even if he didn’t know it at the time.
Way back in the 1970s, when most boys were dreaming of being the next David Bowie or scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup final, Ryde School pupil Steve was getting mighty curious about where his best mate, Neil Rees, was spending weekends.
As it turned out, Neil wasn’t getting up to anything that would these days earn him an ASBO — instead, it was something far more likely to mark him out as the classroom geek — he was playing trains, only these trains were real.
Steve said: "He kept disappearing at weekends. I thought I had better find out what it was all about."
So it was one weekend in 1975, the two lads jumped on their bikes and cycled from Pondwell to Havenstreet, sparking for Steve, the beginning of a lifelong association with the IW Steam Railway.
And just as Steve’s love affair with steam trains has seen both him and the railway he loves grow, both are now looking forward to the next 20 years with confidence.
In fact, its difficult to imagine Steve’s life without the railway — so central has it been to him over the past three-and-a-half decades.
It’s easy to understand the attraction. After all, who wouldn’t want the chance to play with your own giant train set when you were just 13?
Not only that but there was also the opportunity to do something with grown-ups for the first time.
Recalling those early years, Steve said: "I went in as a 13-year-old schoolboy and immersed myself in a world of grown-ups. It was interesting meeting new people and being with steam locomotives. I thought to myself, 'I am a part of this.’"
All young boys need a rite of passage after all. For Masai warriors, it’s about killing lions, for young Jewish boys, it’s the horror of the bar mitzvah, for British lads, during the industrial age, it was all about getting an apprenticeship.
However, even by the mid-1970s, apprenticeships were getting a bit thin on the ground — unless of course, you lived near an emergent preserved railway line where even if you were not formally 'bound’ you could get a sense of what it was like being an adult, simply by hanging round working with them.
Steve added: "In terms of the way Havenstreet Station looked, we had around one-and-a-half miles of line, no workshop yard. It was a growing preserved railway and by definition it had lots of volunteers struggling hard to run trains without facilities."
Coincidentally, Steve began work on the steam railway in the same week it held its first ever steam show celebrating the centenary of the opening of the Ryde-to-Newport line in 1875.
But surprisingly, Steve never hankered after what most non-train people assume is every boy’s dream, to become a steam engine driver. He was happy to just be there, making himself useful.
He said: "It was a baptism of fire and fun. There were about a half dozen of us, I never really wanted to drive but I did want to be up on the footplate."
You might be forgiven for thinking the railway was Steve’s only passion. Well, you would be kind of right. He also happens to be the co-founder of IW Radio (and a number of other mainland radio stations), as well as a qualified surveyor.
Yet somehow, inexorably, these other strings to his bow all link back to a common thread — and that thread leads to Havenstreet.
Back in the 1980s, when Steve was still casting around for things to do with his young life ('O’ and 'A’ levels still had not revealed a definite career path) he was also running a mobile disco, popping up at The Prince Consort in Ryde and the Court Jester club along the way.
As is the way of things on the railway, he found himself being asked to do radio announcements during the railway’s shows.
For young men of Steve’s generation, the spectre of mass unemployment stalked the land and so it was he eventually ended up on one of the government’s much derided make-work programmes, the Youth Opportunities Scheme.
Luckily for Steve, the placement was to learn to be a surveyor and he duly qualified in 1987, after five years’ training.
But don’t for one second imagine the railway had loosened its grip on young Steve. In fact, while he was training he was asked to stand for the board on the railway in 1985, eventually becoming chairman two years ago.
And as a trainee surveyor, his newly acquired skills were called on when he helped to design the railway’s new shop extension.
He chuckled: "When people discover you have a skill or talent on the railway, they ask you to use them to help out. I learned quite a lot about planning applications on the shop project. I used to stay behind in the office when everybody else went home and used their drawing equipment to design the shop."
Now it’s fair to say a love of railways does not exactly increase your pulling power with the opposite sex. Steve recalled at least one occasion when he brought a startled girlfriend to the railway on a date.
He said: "I brought her down here when I was firing a locomotive and she had this look of bemusement on her face sort of asking 'Why have you got coal dust all over your face.?"
However, his wife, Marie, does the marketing for the railway and the pair have a shared love of heritage and history. He said: "You gravitate towards people who are sympathetic."
One of the most significant achievements of the railway over the past two decades has been the opening of the extension from Havenstreet-to Smallbrook Junction.
And there is Steve, popping up again, using his surveyor’s head to help conduct the negotiations between the owners of the defunct trackbed, the IW Council, and the railway, culminating in the re-opening of the line in the early 1990s.
Not only that but Steve, wearing his surveyor’s hat, helped to buy the land for the showground and car park and, as chairman for the last two years, he has been central in drawing up the plans for the long-term future of the line, which has emerged as one of the Island’s top tourist attractions.
He now lives with his family on the mainland but the railway still has him in its coal dust-smeared grip. And the fact is, it always will have.
He said: "It has been the one constant in my life."