Special Train Workings

[strang steel]

Micky - have made enquiries of Relief Signalman George Howe and he reckons the Sunday parcels would have been 3E03, which certainly rings a bell with me although I reckon a train with that reporting number also ran on week nights. It was a parcels train on a Sunday, certainly, but would probably have also conveyed empty passenger vans back to London off Sunday morning's Down newspaper trains. George also tells us that it conveyed water cans from St Neots to Everton signalbox as well (SuO)! The 3E03 I am thinking of on weeknights brought any ex works stock from York and Doncaster as well as empty vans, there always being an imbalance of those at Kings Cross.

On one of my few Sunday outings to the ECML in the 1960s, I saw an up service which comprised 32 vehicles (my notes do not elaborate any further) just south of Stoke Summit at 1440 on 27th October 1968. Given that it still had about 100 miles to go to the Cross, it might be the one you are referring to Micky?

My notes also give the headcode as 3E09, but there was no Deltic on this particular day - just D1103.

John

[Mickey]

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[Mickey]

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[StevieG]

Hello all
" .... The other service which sometimes produced a surprise was the 0715 Peterborough parly, which on several occasions had a March 37 due to a boiler failure on a Finsbury Park Brush 2. It even had, on one memorable day, a Toton Peak purloined off the Little Barford coal train with the Toton driver traction conducting the Peterborough man. The Peterborough driver was booked home passenger from London at this period, so bringing these 'strangers' back light didn't cause too much hassle.

Andy Rush
York Regional Control
1969-84 "

I'm sure I recall one of my colleagues (Martin T.), who also dealt with Peterboro' loco allocations, when I came on for late shift one day around 1975/6, saying that things had somehow turned out so dire for power when it mattered that morning, that all he'd had available to take one of the 'P'boro' parlys' up to London (I couldn't now say, which one), was a 25, which the PE men probably had to take back again as no-one south 'knew' them.

[Mickey]

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[AndyRush]

If it was in winter, he was lucky to find a 25 with a working boiler !

The reason that the 0715 parly was so 'favoured' with unusual power was that it was the last of the series requiring a boiler - i.e. there had usually already been some 'lifting up' to cover an earlier failure and the Peterborough fitter hadn't been able to fix it.

Regards

Andy

Hello all

I'm sure I recall one of my colleagues (Martin T.), who also dealt with Peterboro' loco allocations, when I came on for late shift one day around 1975/6, saying that things had somehow turned out so dire for power when it mattered that morning, that all he'd had available to take one of the 'P'boro' parlys' up to London (I couldn't now say, which one), was a 25, which the PE men probably had to take back again as no-one south 'knew' them.[/quote]

[rob237]

..45.116 of Toton & a 'unrenumbered' D48 worked up into the London area on the 22/09/75...

Could well have been due to a major incident on the MML which, occasionally in the 70's, brought Class 45 hauled diverted Nottm-St Pancras workings past my house in Bingham, en route to Grantham and the ECML.
Cheers
Robt P.

[hq1hitchin]

I just thought that i would mention (and make all you 'spotter's out there salivate ) that back around 1969 i remember seeing the prototype KESTREL passing through Welwyn North on the down evening Yorkshire pullmans on several occasions and atleast onetime around the sametime KESTREL on the same service passing through Welwyn Garden City (from the old station car park on the down side). I believe the loco ended up in the U.S.S.R. of all places and was 'cut up' there sometime back in the 1990s. Micky

Used to see it on a Leeds job in those days as well. Some debate ongoing at the mo whether it actually has been cut up or not. There's a photo showing it dumped but the script is all Russian so we're looking for someone to translate it.

http://www.parovoz.com/newgallery/pg_view.php?ID=235774

Have been able to get the Russian wife of a British railwayman in Cambridge to translate it for us and he says ' After careful interpretation of the Russian language entries by my wife she concludes all information points to Kestrel having been scrapped in 1993.

No sightings have been made since'.

Shame

[Mickey]

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[Mickey]

Talking about 'prototype' diesel locomotives whatever happened to both FALCON & LION that were both running over the ECML in the early 60s?. Micky G.N.R/L.N.E.R.

[StevieG]

Micky - have made enquiries of Relief Signalman George Howe and he reckons the Sunday parcels would have been 3E03, which certainly rings a bell with me although I reckon a train with that reporting number also ran on week nights. It was a parcels train on a Sunday, certainly, but would probably have also conveyed empty passenger vans back to London off Sunday morning's Down newspaper trains. George also tells us that it conveyed water cans from St Neots to Everton signalbox as well (SuO)! The 3E03 I am thinking of on weeknights brought any ex works stock from York and Doncaster as well as empty vans, there always being an imbalance of those at Kings Cross.

3E03 !
Remember that number alright, but I never worked many nights, so didn't recognise where it stopped, including WGC (CT).
Weren't 3A01 and 3A50 other well known (to staff) night-time up parcel workings?

Certainly remember what was presumably, E03's Down counterpart, 3S18, leaving London (KX Goods?) around 21:00 or not too long after.
I happily recall the satisfaction of getting to know 'the SN telegraph' well enough by around 1969 to send this one on from Wood Green No.1, to PO, JV, CT, YE & HC (I think that was the right sequence/places), when, one night, it was coming DF when 1S70 hadn't gone yet (late) ("One S Seven O, No"), to inform that these two were running out of course.
One night at Barnet North, had to wire on 6N66 on DS at 16 past the hour, as per routine (imagine your way through sending that message*, Micky) : Nearly exhausted my stock of S's (and "six" 's) with that one.

[ * - Answer : "Six N Six Six Slow Sixteen" ]

[Deepol]

An old photo of LION at the Cross. I think BRCW were expecting an order from BR but they went to Brush instead and the rest is history. LION was scrapped unfortunately but I understand ironically her engine was later installed in a Brush Type 4.........

[Blink Bonny]

BRCW were in some financial diffivulties when the Lion project was hatched. By the time BR had made their mind up, they'd gone belly up so the order went to Brush using most of Lion's spec.

Lion was the property of BRCW so when the receivers were called in, they got (presumably) the best price they could. Sadly many years before anyone thought those infernal diesels worthy of preservation.

Same, sadly, with Kestrel. A sad picture of her awaiting her fate. Again, I believe that Kestrek was the property of HAwker Siddely, as Brush were now part of this conglomerate, so the Govt had no say in where she went. They did, however, decide not to order locos based on her, an inexplicable cock-up of monumental proportions.

But then British Governments have always done irreperable damage to the British economy by regarding tomorrow as another day.

[Mickey]

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[Blink Bonny]

I remember that at Healey Mills there was quite a severe slack caused by a pitfall at the Wakefield end, just before the Crigglestone line came in. There were a few drivers who could get through that without snatching the couplings, but not many.

Once while trainspotting I saw a freight leaving for the East. The driver was apparently unaware of the cause of the slack and so was the guard. He was leaning on the verandah board of his van and didn't hear the clashing buffers. His van did 15-70mph (approx) quicker than you can read the figures. He was pitched head first over the verandah rail, landing on the concrete weight and managed to haul himself back up via the handrail with his feet dragging on the sleepers. Had it been an LMS type van, he would have been dead but as it was he had a BR/LNER van so landed on the weight.

A very lucky man.

The same guy (I'm sorry but all this happened when I was a small boy so I dont't remember names) used to take a deck chair with him which he set up on the verandah of the LMS type vans on a nice day to catch some rays!