With the winter timetable about to kick in, today is the final day of loco hauled passenger trains in the South West. Here's a quick photo-salute to commemorate this day. As from tomorrow, all of Virgin's services will be worked by HST sets, or the new Voyager units, whilst Great Western will have enough Adelante units to cascade HST sets back to the south western lines. The only passenger services which will remain loco hauled will be the overnight sleeper to London, and various charters to the region. Enough of my chatting, here's the pictures... Virgin's 47810 "Porterbrook" skirts the sea wall north of Teignmouth with a northbound service... Great Western's 47816 waits departure from Exeter for London Paddington... Great Western has also been using 57601, the demonstrator passenger class 57 (a class 47 re-engined with an EMD prime mover), here its leaving Exeter for the west one evening, just passing through St Thomas station...
It is a shame to lose the locomotive-hauled trains, bit those class 47's are really getting on a bit! It seems forever since I saw the first units of the class on the ECML, in that lovely two-tone green livery! The 47's are being lost on all Virgin services, with the huge influx of new multiple units. At least some will live on in the guise of class 57
Thanks for the pics Martyn. The same is happening in my part of the country. This weekend the Euston-Holyhead services revert to HST's (and eventually Voyagers) and the WCML 86/87's will soon start to disappear. First NorthWestern are still using a hired EWS 47 on North Wales - Manchester trains in lieu of a class 175 DMU......... When they are not on strike Dont despair too much. Once the Voyagers get a few more miles under their belts you will probably start seeing more and more 47/57's in the shape of Thunderbird rescue locos. John
Nearly forgot. Here's one for you Alan. Retro liveried 47851 at Runcorn station on a Liverpool - Paddington service last July. John.
WOO-HOO!!! Beautiful, John They looked even better with just the small yellow panel under the front windows. What became class 25 also looked good in this livery.
'Spose i'd better put the other side of the coin as well..., just in case anyone thinks i'm getting too sentimental! While we are mourning the passing of "old friends", it would be somewhat unkind of us to overlook Virgin's acheivement here, they have totally replaced a sizeable fleet of 1960's built 95/100mph loco's and coaches with 125mph diesel units, some with tilt capability, which have worked essentially "straight from the box". Then this weekend they introduced a brand new clockface timetable to make the best use of them. This timetable is no less of an acheivement, despite having to accomodate services on virtually every other main line in the country, and is certainly the biggest shakeup in train services on the cross country axis (if not in the UK as a whole) for many, many years. The following was clipped from South West Railgen group on Yahoo, (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SWRG) from the Keyboard of Hugh Dady... Wether you like the new Voyager trains or not, I think most people would call this weekend something of a milestone in UK railway history... [ 30. September 2002, 13:52: Message edited by: Martyn Read ]
Perfectly correct. Virgin have made great strides both in quality of trains and service in a very short time, with more improvements to come when the WCML is finally upgraded. Well done Richard's people
