It is time for a break from 6M16 as we have now reached the weeknd. There were a couple of charters booked through the Thames Rail region today. The first was a Paddington – Plymouth which was steam hauled from Taunton, however this one was through Didcot just before 8am so I decided to pass on the that one. The second one was a Cardiff – Cardiff circular VSOE trip which was out via Swindon and Didcot and returned via the Cotswold line to Worcester and back to Cardiff.
I settled for the shot at Shrivenham, I have often been here to shoot stuff heading West but never photographed workings heading East. It is quite a nice shot and has a nice pine tree to add some intrest to the shot. Running a few minutes late 67015 turned up on 1Z50 with Royal 67006 tailing on the rear. It was a shame the royal wasn’t leading as I would have liked to get a shot of 67 in royal colours.
Today I am going bring some shots of workings that are not 6M16 but not through choice. I will explain later but to start off with lets have another look at one of my favourite workings the Avonbinliner. Mid morning the cloud cleared off to leave some nice sunshine so I decided to head over to Grove on the GWML to photograph the working. It hazed up a bit while I was waiting but it was still decent enough when 66546 turned up. Infact looking through my collection this is my fourth shot of 66546 so it appears to be a common loco on the Thames valley.
After the bins I decided to head home for a couple of hours before heading out to photograph 6M16 again. This time however it was not 47197 at the helm but brand new Freightliner loco 66622 on its debut outing. Once I had killed some time I set off for Moreton cutting.
I arrived just after 15.00 just incase 6M16 was running early. While I was waiting 66519 working hard on 6A97 Hinksey – Reading passed through the cutting haulingI part of the HOBC (High Output Ballast Cleaner). Next up was 66081 working 7V27 Eastleigh – Bescot engineers with a cable laying train.
By now the time was well past 16.00 and 6M16 was quite late, I was beginning to wonder if something had happened to it. Just then a Freightliner 66 appeared around the corner and I thought it had finally turned up but as it approached I saw it had containers and not cars and realised it was not 6M16. It was 66541 working 4S59 Southampton – Coatbridge at a guess as it was running a few minutes earlier than its booked time.
If you look at the right hand side of the image of 66541 it is a bit hazy and distorted this is due to an HST slowing for the next signal and that is the exhaust of the rear power car just moving out of shot in time which was lucky as 66541 was motoring well. I had pretty much given up on 6M16 now and so had the sun just about, just before it disappeared I managed to grab one last shot.
66013 crawled up to the signal working 6M23 Fawley – Bromford Bridge bitumen and you could smell it! Someone had given the bodywork on 66013 a clean and it looked quite shiny. After this working I head for home and once back there was a message stating 6M16 had not left the docks at 15.30 and later on it was reported at Reading yard with problems!!
Hmmm, it smells of Deja Vu around here today as I bring you the third shot of 6M16 in as many working days. Also to add to the Deja Vu it features 47197 yet again. Well I couldn’t bring you the same location as yesterday as that would be boring, instead I decided to sample the delights of Didcot North Junction.
From the footbridge at Didcot North you can see the station in the distance so get advanced warning of any workings heading around. At bang on 16.00 a fast moving freight passed the gap in the trees so I took up position. 47197 came hammering around the avoiding curve on 6M16 thrashing away like mad. I took the video with me today so once I have chance edit the video I will put the file on here for you to view.
