Thames Rail

Monday 25th August 2008

Fastline Freight have won a contract to move coal out of Portbury docks in Bristol and in preperation for this work the drivers have begun route learning. The empties will run down the Lickey but as Fastline have no banking loco the loaded return working will have to run via Oxford. Last week they were learning the line from Derby to Oxford but this week they are going the whole way to Portbury.

The good thing about the route learners are they are using Class 56s which I haven’t seen in the Thames Valley area for many years. The only downside is they won’t be used to haul the proper workings which will be handled by Fastline 66s plus presumably hired locos as they are a bit lacking at present. Running as 0Z57 Portbury - Derby I photted 56303 pounding through Radley a few minutes late at 14:23 today.

Saturday 23rd August 2008

I have something a bit different for you today as Pathfinder Railtours had organised a trip, ‘The Dorset Coast Explorer’ to Weymouth featuring a pair of WCRC Cromptons. The trip started from Crewe and ran down through Bristol in the morning with the return routed via Oxford which meant I would be out for the return working.

The day had started with glorious sunshine by by the return rolled around it had clouded over so I didn’t go far. I went out to Culham and had a surprise when I found the lane out to the bridge is now a restricted byway meaning no motor vehicles. I had to park back at the school and then had a 15 min walk to the bridge. I still made it with a few minutes to spare and pretty much bang on time 33025/33207 came storming around the curve on 1Z34 Weymouth - Crewe.

Thursday 14th August 2008

A rare weekday update from me, in fact just make that a rare update at all! Wow what a shocking summer we are having, the weather is rubbish, in fact I wasn’t expecting today to be nice but I decided to risk it. My main target was the Avon bins as it is rumoured to stop running fairly soon as an incinerator has been built at Avonmouth to dispose of the waste so I wanted to get a shot before the end, although looking back I probably have a good 30-40 shots taken at Denchworth on slide when the service initially switched to Freightliner haulage!

I decided to head for Shrivenham today however as parking is a bit of a pain at Denchworth now the bridge has been replaced as it means parking a fair way away to avoid blocking the bridge. I had seen a TOPS report for the previous day and 66562 had been allocated to the train and as expected 66562 again did the honours today hauling 4V60 Calvert - Bath/Bristol empty refuse containers.

A chap turned up and asked if I was waiting for the Tug on the 6B33 Theale - Robeston Oil empties and he mentioned 60040 was today’s power. I didn’t think much of it even when he mentioned the crowd standing on the next bridge along but it wasn’t until it homed into view that I realised it was the celebrity Territorial Army livery that I had seen at Merehead Open day a few weeks before! It was nice to actually phot one of these liveries out at work on the mainline as my weekday opportunities are rather limited bar holiday. I had already done the standard shot of the top of the bridge for 66562 on on the Avon bins so decided to switch it up for the tug. I popped on the 300mm + 1.4 teleconverter giving me 420mm and moved down to the bottom of the bridge to get a rather different viewpoint from the normal one seen at Shrivenham. The forecast for tomorrow is for the same if not slightly better so fingers crossed!