Sometimes knowing a little, but not quite everything about railway operation can be scary. I was on board an Oxford to Paddington express approaching Reading along the up fast line of the Great Western main line into London, when we’re slowed by a signal check. I’m sitting facing forward on the right-hand side of the train, and I can see a long train of aggregate hoppers hauled by a Hanson-liveried class 59 coming off the Berks and Hants line, which merges into the GWML at the west end of the station.
So the signallers are giving the freight priority over us, I thought. But no, the Thames Turbo starts to accelerate, as if given a clear signal into the station. Are we being crossed over to platform 8 on the slow line, I wonder? No, we’ve already passed the crossover. I started to have horrifying thoughts of Southall and Ladbrooke Grove disasters.
Then to my relief I realise the freight is too far over; it’s running wrong-road on the down line; all the through tracks at Reading are bi-directional. So the two trains end up running on parallel tracks, with about two feet between the outside of the window by which I was sitting, and the wagons of the freight.
Those class 59s have now been in service for fifteen years – how time flies! When first introduced they were the first privately-owned locomotives to run on what was then British Rail, and were also the first products of General Motors to run on British rails. Little did we know then that this small American incursion was to lead to EWS’ huge order for the class 66s, the locomotive equivalent of the grey squirrel.
As I used to say in my email .sig
If you receive a ship labelled “Class 66s”, DO NOT OPEN IT! It contains a virus that will overwrite all your other locomotives.
