Author Archives: Tim Hall

Since so many people love taking the piss out of us rail enthusiasts (not trainspotters!), sometimes it’s fun to have a laugh at the expense of those who don’t share my hobby – take a look at this post on Dreamlyrics.

Just got back from a week in the glorious Devon sun.

I spent the days photographing trains along the sea wall, getting through ten rolls of film, and the evenings propping up the bar of the Marine Tavern, which just happens to be the local of well-known railway photographer Colin Marsden. I’ll put up some of the photos I took once I’ve had them developed.

The main attraction, of course, is the finale of Virgin Trains’ loco-hauled workings. Unlike the end of the “Westerns”, “Deltics” or class 50s, there’s a feel not unlike the end of steam about this. Once these trains are gone, there will be nothing more than HSTs, multiple units, and the occasional freight.

Naturally the photographers turned out in droves; two or three on just about every bridge. I heard from a reliable source that there were no less than forty at Cockwood harbour on the Saturday evening. Over the week I met quite a few of the SWRG crowd on the way, as well as the webmaster of the Pet Unit site.

To celebrate all this, Virgin trains have painted six of the surviving class 47s in special liveries to mark their final months in service, five of the six in liveries the class have carried over their long lives.

• 47826 is painted up like a police car to promote the British Transport Police. I’m not convinced by this one myself. Who remembers the class 37 they did in an inter-city advert years ago?
• 47829 “Springburn” is in the Inter-City “Swallow” livery the locomotives carried immediately before privatisation.
• 47840 “North Star” carries the standard BR blue carried from the mid-60s onwards, the longest-lived colour scheme BR ever had.
• 47847 is painted in the large-logo blue scheme that started to appear in the mid-1980s
• 47851 carries 1960s two-tone green. They’ve done this with the full yellow ends as carried in the late 60s, and it really takes me back to my pre-teen trainspotting years.
• 47853 is painted in the 1964 “XP64″ experimental blue – this was a forerunner of the BR blue, but a slightly lighter shade. Unlike the others, it’s not a livery I ever remember seeing in the flesh back in the 60s.

I managed to see five out of the six; the only one missing was “Springburn”, which was unwell, restricted to empty stock workings in and out of Paddington, and travelled to and from Devon behind two of them; I had Police 47826 on the Glasgow-Penzance on the way down, and XP64 47853 on the Penzance-Manchester on the way back up.

Of course, not all the photos were of Virgin Trains 47s; First Great Western have a couple of loco-hauled workings as well. There were some class 67-hauled mail trains, now apparently doomed, and a few evening freights. I even took quite a few photos of South West Trains’ class 159s; for some reason I find the livery quite photogenic, and a six-car set looks like a proper train! And First Great Western’s (old) livery HSTs are quite photogenic against the backdrop of sea and red cliffs.

I’m taking a break for a few days, down to (hopefully) sunny Dawlish in south Devon. Being a rail enthusiast I’m going to pay my last respects to Virgin Trains elderly class 47 locomotives making their final stand in the south-west of England against the incoming tide of Virgin Voyagers.

Realistically, I have to recognise that the class 47s, now nearly 40 years old, are life-expired and in need of replacement. They’d been getting increasingly unreliable and expensive to maintain in their old age, and a gentle retirement in preservation puttering up and down a short tourist line is what they deserve. But for the next few weeks at least, they’re still in front-line service, working intensive diagrams taking them from one end of the country to the other.

I have my doubts about their replacements, officially named “Voyagers” and unofficially called “Cola Cans”. I find the interiors cramped, there’s a severe lack of luggage space caused by the fact the overhead luggage racks won’t take anything larger than a briefcase. Someone forgot that these are not commuter units, they’re long-distance trains used largely by the holiday and visiting-friends-and-relatives market, most of whom come equipped with large volumes of luggage. Then you’ve got the vibrations from the underfloor engines to remind you you’re really travelling in a glorified sprinter with a pointy nose at the front. A significant number of the seats don’t line up with the windows so you can’t actually see out. And the less said about the unreliable high-tech toilets the better. Altogether they’re less comfortable than the 25-year old Mk2 stock they’re replacing. Perhaps Virgin should have refurbished their existing coaches and simply bought some new locomotives to haul them.

No doubt the some problems will be solved in time; the teething troubles with the toilets will be fixed eventually, and sooner or later they’ll take some seats out to make room for more luggage racks. But I’m sure the idea of 4-car trains replacing the existing 7-car sets is a bad idea, even if the plan is to increase the service frequency. The trains travelling at popular times, such as morning long-haul departures are going to get badly overcrowded. Are we heading towards airline-style travel, where it’s necessary to book several days in advance if you want to travel at the time of your choice?

I’m going to be travelling down on the Glasgow-Penzance between Manchester and Exeter; this will be 47-hauled all the way, a five-hour trip behind loco-haulage. In less than a month, this will be history.

All you ever wanted to know about Cornish wagonload freight trains. Some train formations from 1986 to 1991, mostly taken from my photographic archive and notes, and some purely from memory. (While some people can remember obscure third division football scores, I can remember train formations) It’s not fully complete, because I haven’t been able to dig up all the notes, but it will be updated eventually. Did you know Yeoman-liveried PGAs were used on calcified seaweed traffic in 1990?

The banner ad is meant to be ironic. And it is a really good album…