AS you may know it was FA Cup first round day last weekend, and that made us think back to 2015 when Didcot Town FC were live on TV against Exeter City.

We had our steam engines running that day and the BBC cameras actually picked us up a couple of times during the game.

Unfortunately the railwaymen were unable to cause an upset on that occasion, but our memories of the day got us thinking about the links between steam and football.

The LNER actually named some of their B17-class steam engines after notable football clubs, beginning with Arsenal in March 1936, and finishing with West Ham United in July 1937.

None of these engines survived into preservation, however the nameplates were often presented to the football club concerned when the engines were taken out of service.

Norwich City has installed their nameplate above the players tunnel at their Carrow Road ground.

The most obvious link between the railways and the beautiful game were the often infamous ‘Football Specials’ which were, as the name suggests, a series of special trains laid on to ferry supporters to away matches so as to keep the fans separate from the regular rail users.

Starting in the 1960s, these trains were often filled to capacity with supporters crossing the country to support their teams.

Unfortunately they were cancelled in the late 1980s, in no small part due to less than perfect behaviour of supporters at the time.

Nowadays huge numbers of fans travel on regularly-scheduled services – indeed spend any amount of time at ‘hub’ stations such as King’s Cross in London or Birmingham New Street on a matchday and you will see supporters from all levels of the pyramid from the Premier League down to the Combined Counties League changing trains in order to reach matches from Old Trafford, to Whaddon Road, and not forgetting our friends over at Loop Meadow of course!

There have been calls in recent times to re-instate the idea of Football Specials, and several companies have laid on extra trains when clubs have been involved in bigger matches or Cup Finals. Oxford United fans will remember having additional services added for their recent trips to Wembley, and in May 2017 Crystal Palace chartered a steam engine for their trip to Southampton.

The train ran from Claphamto Southampton and after the match the players returned on the service. Sadly for them, Palace lost the match, so in the best traditions of football they will probably see travelling by steam as an unlucky omen…