The BeerTrain

The Portsmouth to Cardiff services were due to finish in May 1988, I and many of the Crompton roadshow were spending an increasing number of days out "on the Bash", sometimes using Leave & sometimes just going Sick from work! With so many booked turns to cover and mileage to accumulate, very little time was spent eating or drinking - no breakfast, food on the go during the day from chippy's and then little or no time for Beer! Saturday 31st October Unfortunately the brickworks where I worked had started working on Saturday mornings due to demand, as the only person trained on my Brick stacking machine this meant I could no longer leap on Friday evening for the 2252 Waterloo - Weymouth (booked a 33) but could only make the 1410 Waterloo - Salisbury on Saturday afternoon. EMU  Sittingbourne - London Victoria 44m 40ch 33108 Waterloo - Salisbury 1L09 1410 Waterloo - Salisbury 83m 43ch 33064 Salisbury - Fareham 1O43 1415 Cardiff - Portsmouth Hbr 38m 43ch 33048 Fareham - Ba...

The Pompey's had finished in May of this year, since then my weekends had been spent leaping around the country scratching locos. I couldn't yet face spending my days between Waterloo & Salisbury on a succession of class 33/1 "Bagpipes", the only booked Crompton diagrams left.  I would return South every Saturday night, however, to cover the 0330 class 33/1 overnight out of Waterloo to Portsmouth which was then booked back up to Waterloo then out to Salisbury. This kept my Crompton mileage ticking over. It was now time for some Annual Leave & an All Line Rover. # = Required Loco or Unit for haulage. Friday 22/07/88 1535# / 1536# / 1590  Sittingbourne - London Victoria 44m 59ch HST  St.Pancras - Leicester 99m 47373 Leicester - Nuneaton 1M22 1840 Skegness - Nuneaton 19m 12ch 156 417# Nuneaton - Birmingham New Street 21m 08ch A poor start, the Skeg - Nuneaton was booked a pair of class 20's NOT a dud slow speed fitted Knottingley class 47! Saturday 23/07/88 4...

Over 5 years since our last tour (the Robin Reliant of 15/02/1997), I was rather hoping to hang up my hat where 33111 Charters were concerned - other people in our  Class 33/1 Preservation Society  had other plans!  I agreed to look into the planning & timing side of things but passed the advertising/bookings & seating plan operations over to Dave Fry (thanks Dave).  We were taking the opportunity to use one of our own loco's (33108, on hire to Fragonset) on the tour which would feature a pair of class 33's from the Fragonset mainline pool with Riviera stock from Crewe CS. As I had been involved in the Epic that was the "Skirl o'the Bagpipes" in 1995 which took Crompton's North of the Border for the first time, we would take the chance to turn left at Gretna Jn & bash all new track for class 33's all time! To achieve this end an overnight start was required to give us the time we needed once in the South West of Scotland, so not wanting to leav...