IT’S OFFICIAL: trainspotting is cool.

I don’t mean the film - that’s packed a punch for 25 years - but hanging around on station platforms scribbling the numbers of locomotives into notebooks.

It’s long been associated with blokes in beige anoraks, but that’s all changed since lockdown.

Pastimes seen as ‘nerdy’, like trainspotting, birdwatching and stamp collecting, are now deemed cool. It is one of the many ‘old-fashioned’ hobbies now enjoyed by six out of ten young adults, says a survey.

The study found many more people aged between 16 and 29 have taken up such a pastime in the last year, with 58 percent claiming that doing so has helped them feel grounded.

This is refreshing news, although I think it will be some time before my 20-something daughters grace the end of the platform at Bradford Interchange to watch incoming diesels.

Along with many others, I used to joke about trainspotters and raise an eyebrow on seeing people gathered beside the tracks, but now I can see the appeal. You’re out in the fresh air with like-minded people, never knowing what’s going to come your way. When you think about it, it’s quite exciting.

I find goods trains in particular interesting, especially those that take several minutes to trundle through a station. My friend once visited America and told me how she sat in a restaurant beside a railway line and ate an entire meal while the same freight train went past. How fascinating is that?

I’m also a keen birdwatcher - nothing with feathers escapes my notice in our garden. I am thrilled to have family of blue tits inhabiting our nestbox.

But I’m 60 and us oldies are renowned for having ‘nerdy’ hobbies. It is not unusual for us to get hooked on things like flower arranging, knitting and making jam. I didn’t think many people below the age of 40 would show an interest in such pastimes, yet over the past year that’s changed. Such hobbies have been described as ‘cool’ and ‘hipster’ by those surveyed in the study by online hobby shop Create and Craft.

Growing your own veg and fishing are also increasing in popularity with the Generation Z-ers.

These simple pleasures may set a trend for the future. Students might replace pub crawls with an evening bus spotting - I once spent a morning with a bus spotter and got quite into it, although it can be very intense. I’d recommend starting off in Eldwick rather than central Bradford.

There’s a lot to be said for traditional pastimes - they remove you from your normal life, and provide a welcome retreat from screens, keypads and technology.

Baking bread, needlework, sketching, painting - many of us haven’t tried these things since school. I started doing a bit of sewing during lockdown. My sewing basket used to be my grandma’s, which makes it all the more enjoyable.

Incredibly, almost three quarters of the under-30s polled said they’d rather spend a weekday evening doing their favourite hobby than on a Zoom call with friends. Forty-four per cent of people claim they will continue with their new-found pastime after all restrictions are lifted. Sadly, I don’t think any amount of train spotting, embroidery or planting runner beans will prise young adults away from their phones and tablets in the long term, they are too interwoven in their lives. But maybe they will step back once or twice a week and enjoy simpler, infinitely more rewarding pleasures