A bit of an oddity today, I had seen a message earlier in the week regarding a charter from Oxford to Moreton-in-Marsh with an associated ECS movement from East Ham. The weather was glorious so I thought I would head out to Moreton cutting to try and bag the ECS.
It wasn’t until I had arrived on location and I checked my messages again that I could see it was running 60 minutes late due to problems furthur up the line! I had a plesant wait in the sunshine until 47813 top and tailing with 47818 passed me with 5Z87 East Ham – Oxford conveying a full set of Blue Pullman coaches.
Although it was running late I still had time to make it out to the Cotswold line for another shot, I only knew of one location on the line and that was at Charlbury. I made it with 15 minutes to spare and upon arrival figured out the reason for the charter. In a field the other side of the line was a marquee with very loud music pumping out of it as a band warmed up, there was security at the gate along with more on the station platform waiting for the charter to arrive. On time 47813 rolled into Charlbury station with the 1Z87 Oxford – Moreton-in-Marsh were everyone detrained and headed into the marquee for their gig!
There is not normally much activity on a Sunday on the railway system with freight activity restricted to special workings or engineers trains. Thanks to a friend who emailed me a list of engineers trains working out of Hinksey this weekend I managed to get the photo for today. As I was looking through the email I noticed there was an 6W25 08:30 Evesham – Hinksey. Loco hauled trains over the Cotswold line are limited to just a handful a year so I wanted to get out for a rare shot over the line.
As the train was due of Evesham at 08:30 it meant I had to get up early on a Sunday! As I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss it I got up at 06:30 incase it departed early. I awoke to blue skies which was a good sign so I set off but enroute I ran into thick fog which covered the sky all the way out to my location at Chilson. I arrived at 07:30 and as it wasn’t due for another 1.5 hours I decided to stay put in the hope it would clear up. I’m glad I did as just after 08.00 it lifted to give clear blue skies and shortly after 09:00 I heard a two tone horn so I knew it was approaching. 66077 top and tailed with 66191 rounded the curve into sight on a short engineers train and was accelerating hard past my location.
Part Deux
It is not often that I have two updates in one day but shortly after finishing my Cotswold line update a message came through that 47854 would be working 5Z56 14:10 Tysely – Old Oak Common ECS movement from its tour the previous day. It was also booked via Oxford and Reading so I wouldn’t have to travel far to see it either. I had two locations in mind, first up was Hinksey yard and the second choice was Culham. Hinksey is just straight track so I thought it would be pretty boring and also it had been awhile since I had been to Culham so I opted for the later.
I took my steps along to check out the location that I took 67008 from on 14th February 2004 but the ferns and bushes were very overgrown and would involved trespassing to get any decent shot which I didn’t want to do. I had to settle for the overbridge which wasn’t ideal as a tree had covered the left hand side leaving the shot quite head on. I chucked the 135mm lens on the camera and went for a telephoto shot. 47854 rounded the corner pretty much on time and maybe a couple of minutes early and it looked smart in its new livery and silver buffers, it was also nice to see a matching set of stock as most tours these days quite often have three or four different liveries in a set.
