Category Archives: Thames Valley

Saturday 4th February 2012

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Despite the forecast for snow later in the afternoon the day dawned sunny and bright. A quick skim of the gen lists showed that a 70 was allocated to one of the normal Saturday southbound Freightliners and a short trip to Oxford looked ideal to bag the shot.

En route to Oxford I noticed a large bank of cloud moving in from the West which I presumed would be bring the snow later in the day and luckily I had left it quite last minute before setting off so I would not have long to wait. 70001 was running to schedule as it eased the 4O27 Garston – Southampton out of the loop and back on to the main line at Oxford North Junction and the signal cleared for the centre road just seconds before I fired the shutter as shown by the exhaust as power was applied.

Monday 23rd January 2012

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The night phot of the VSOE at Didcot on Saturday has given me the bug to take more time exposures so I got browsing to see what was about and I stumbled across the loco hauled workings on the Chiltern line and in particular the 1H08 Banbury – London Marybelone. The empty stock is booked to arrive in Platform 2 from Wembley before crossing over to the North of the station and then running back into Platform 3 ready depart South giving me ample time to get some shots.

As the train is booked to depart at 06:53 it meant an early 05:15 wake up call to ensure I was there in time and it will probably catch up with me later in the day! I arrived shortly before the stocks booked arrival time of 06:30 and walked onto the platform to see the DVT gliding in on a rather lengthy 7 car set although a bit of a mish mash of liveries with Blue & Grey and ex Virgin stock. The ECS waited for a southbound Chiltern unit to pass before crossing over and running back into the station. I was quite pleased with the celebrity livery on the train as 67018 ‘Keith Heller’ in DBS red was the power for todays working and my first photo of this loco.

Saturday 21st January 2012

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After some lovely winter light to start off this year it was decidedly grey today but that would not be a problem for what I had planned. It has been a while since my last night phot and today’s target looked like it would fit the bill. I had noted there was a VSOE trip to Bath Spa today running via the Thames Valley but looking at the timings I noticed it was booked a few minutes at Didcot in both the morning and evening, this immediately suggested to me that it was for a crew change so come early evening I packed up my camera gear and tripod and set off expectantly.

I arrived early just in case but unfortunately the prior HST was running 20 mins late for some reason so I had a chilly wait in the windy conditions but just a couple of minutes behind the HST 67017 turned up on the 1Z93 Bath Spa – London Victoria VSOE stock and stopped for the crew change as I had expected. The stock had gone down top and tailed with 67025 but the return was just 67017 up front so not sure if a problem with 67025 or a planned move to leave it at Bristol?