Back in October, Rachel & myself were staying with her parents in Birmingham for a weeks holiday, meanwhile my brother Matt had got himself a job in Leeds, and had moved there. From where we live in Exeter, Leeds is 4 1/2 hours, and Birmingham is about half way between the two. So, as I was halfway there already, I looked at taking two days & visiting Leeds, plus get some railfan time in as well! Looking at the options, I could do Birmingham-Leeds on day one, spend most of the day with Matt, then have an early start and go freight train hunting in Doncaster and Barnetby, and then back to Birmingham. I managed to get a decent set of fares as well so that that little lot was cheaper than a Birmingham-Leeds return as well!!! So here's the trip report, plus a few pics...
13th October: Gravelly Hill Stn to Birmingham New Street, then Birmingham New St to Leeds Central... First train was one of these local EMU's from Gravelly Hill station, in the North Birmingham suburbs into Birmingham New st, along with a whole bunch of commuters! At New St, I took the time to shoot some of the Virgin loco-hauled trains, these 110mph loco's are due to all be out of service with Virgin by the end of 2004, so time to shoot them now! This is 87026 'Sir Richard Arkwright' shoving it's train out of New St towards London (these trains run in push-pull mode) New St to Leeds was on a 4 car Virgin Voyager, which was well loaded with a few people standing over the whole route. I had a reserved seat though
At Leeds, I had a half-hour to kill before meeting Matt for lunch, so I shot some of the local units. Leeds station has recently had a big rebuild, and is a very impressive sight, lots of track, lots of trains (although most are small units.) The local operating company round here is Arriva Trains Northern...I quickly found out that Arriva has a lot of different paint schemes out there! 156475 is seen in "northern spirit" blue/green. Some units haven't had a paint since BR days! "Pacer" Railbus 142079 sports Arriva decals, but little else... Brand-new electric units handle some local services, these in a red/silver variant of the 'northern spirit' scheme... Some of Arriva's Pacer railbuses are getting refurbished, 144006 sports a fancy red & silver paint scheme and all new seating. Right, tomorrow i'll tell you what happenned on the 14th....
Is there some type of a coupler cushioning system on those units that do not have buffers? Are buffers being phased out as newer passenger locos come into use? Boxcab E50
Pierce, more colour later! All British 2nd generation (post 1980) units have autocouplers that handle the MU capability, air and coupling forces as well, no buffers needed. The class 333 electric unit's buffer-like bits are anti-override protection, under the smooth front panels on those bits there is a set of sharp corrugations, the idea is that in a collision the two cars would "lock" together and neither would be able to rear-up on the other one. Conventional loco's and hauled stock still mostly relies on buffers, although EWS now has wagons fitted with US-Style buckeyes only and no buffers, and loco's fitted with "convertible" buckeye/conventional couplings to haul them.
Just looking through... The 323 has a buckeye with electric/air connections. The 87 has conventional buffers & screwlinks. The 142/143/156 have Tightlock couplers. The 333 has a Sharfenberg. Whew!
Nothing is new is it - the best ideas have all been tried before - the Great Central Railway had some passenger coaches with a corrugated anti-ride arrangement on the ends upwards of 100 yrs ago (for those who don't know, the GCR was one of the pre-grouping (i.e. pre-1923) independent English private railway companies which reached their zenith of development in the early years of the 20thC before the First World War virtually destroyed the system through overuse and lack of maintenance and nearly bankrupted most of the companies so that the only option was "grouping" into the Big Four that existed from 1923 until nationalization in 1948 (LNER, LMS, SR, GWR). I was in Leeds last weekend, Martyn, but didn't have the opportunity to do any railfanning although I did notice a large colour light signal gantry near Armley on the approaches to Central Station from the west. Ben
Part II - 14th October, Leeds City Station. The following morning saw me up and away from Matt's at around 7.30am to head back into the centre of Leeds. I had heard the previous week that Arriva had loco's and coaches working on a Settle & Carlisle line duty during weekdays. (It's now running weekends as well.) The train uses class 37/4 loco's leased from EWS, and four air-conditioned Mk2 coaches released from Virgin Trains. The coaches have been through-wired and so the train runs with a loco at both ends with both machines working in multiple. On this day 37408 'Loch Rannoch' was in the lead leaving Leeds, with 37405 bringing up the rear. 1st pic shows Loch Rannoch awaiting departure, second is the rear of the train heading off into the distance...
After the Carlisle service left I shot a couple more local units, including this 3 car 144 unit in it's original West Yorkshire PTE paint. After this "Network Rail's" track measurement HST set (aka The Flying Banana) pulled in, but I didn't photograph it here (more of this later!) as I was getting ready to board my train to Doncaster. GNER provided 373302 in full GNER blue & orange, here it is looking rather nice in the morning sunshine... Stay tuned for the next installments, my thoughts on my first Eurostar ride, Frustration at Doncaster, and a side trip to Barnetby...
Sounds like it could be a bit of a headache to keep stores for maintenance. And probably would cost quite a lot to standardize. Boxcab E50
Yeah! Not a new thing either, all those types with the exception of the 333 date from British Rail days!
Well, I loved the Eurostar ride. My only down-side thought was it was a little tatty inside (these are now 10 years old, time for a refurb soon I think!) Ride quality was excellent, it was almost like someone was rolling the scenery past you... The surprising thing was that, even at 125mph you could tell that there was plenty more power, it felt like it was itching to keep accelarating. On the whole, very impressed! GNER gave me a nice, fast, on time run to Doncaster. Doncaster is a major junction on the East Coast main line, with lines leaving in many directions, it's a major crossing place for both freight and passenger, and retains a large railway workshop, in short, a pretty good place to watch trains! Shortly after arriving, the Network Rail measurement train arrived, having followed our train from Leeds at 125mph. 43013 was the lead power car, which used to work for Virgin Trains. The most obvious change for it's new role is the box under the windscreen which houses recording camera's. I did end up getting frustrated with Doncaster, every time I went to one side of the station, something interesting would come through in another direction! Two intermodals and two coal trains passed in a fairly short space of time, but I managed to get nice shots of two more Arriva DMU's! A class 153 single car unit and a 156...
Great stuff Martyn! More please!! Makes me want to quit work and travel around photographing trains There is certainly plenty of variety these days. I am waiting for you to arrive at barnetby
Okay then... The Doncaster to Barnetby train was an Arriva class 158 unit like this one. These are quite nice, but are getting to the stage where they could do with an interior refit. 158772 is seen here arriving at Barnetby with a train of Freightliner coal empties in the background. The coal train was held here for the passenger to get past. The train service to/from Doncaster was hourly. One of the helpful things at Barnetby is this new footbridge, this makes the station disabled-accessable, and by happy coincidence makes a great place to shoot photo's from! Another key feature is the signalling, this was my favourite, with the small arm controlling access to the yard and the large controlling the goods line to the west. The goods line is one of five running lines from Barnetby to the junction about a mile West. To the East there are three tracks, two Westbound and one Eastbound. Train traffic is dominated by coal and iron ore, imported through Immingham to the East, and heading either to the steelworks at S****horpe, or coal to the power stations of central England. This is Freightliner's 66548 heading West with coal loads, past the signal box and impressive array of semaphores. More later!
Thanks Martyn. Looks like a great place to photograph trains, wide open views, plenty of semaphore signals, and an excellent photography platform (footbridge) Any refreshment facilities on the station?
There's a pub just outside, and the station is right next to the village so there is likely a shop there as well. I'd brought a sandwich from Doncaster, so I didn't venture outside the station! More Barnetby stuff later...
