The BeerTrain

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...

WHERE AM I ...who am I...what time is it? These were my first thoughts upon being awakened on a clear morning in July 1991: Friday the 12th of July to be exact. "Richard, phone call" came a voice I recognised as belonging to my mother. "What's the time?" I asked. "Twenty past five" came the reply. Heavens to Betsy, I thought as I struggled out of bed, I've only been asleep for 4 hours. Myself, Tim Reiner, Gibbo & Rich Pinker had attended the Weekly Wind Up at the Evening Star in Brighton the night before - at least I got home, unlike Mr.P! I pulled some clothes on - no fashion reports in these pages - and staggered to the phone. "Poodle... I'm very nearly out of money... so I will say this only once: 0731 Ashford to Hastings, 0913 Hastings to Ashford, 1012 Ashford to Hastings and so on and so forth all day." By the time my brain had bestirred itself to decipher the first word, I had missed all this, so I had to ask for an action r...

By the time you read this we should hopefully be in the grip of reasonably temperate English weather, so in order to get in the spirit of it all, what I suggest is that you crack open a can of soup, put on a scarf, and sit in front of an open freezer door. CD's of dashing troika bells are, of course, an optional extra... Wednesday 6th February 1991 When it snows anywhere in the world, life tends to carry on as normal. Even in the UK, the Scots regard it as the frozen equivalent of water off a duck's back, and the "Eee it's grim oop North" merchants carry on regardless. But when it snows south of Watford it's a.... NATIONAL CRISIS! Thus when the snow started falling on Wednesday, 6th February 1991, our splendid Third Rail network fell apart as can only be expected when the elements have the dashed awful cheek to mess about. It's just not on! I was on a work course all week in the Hilton hotel in Basingstoke, and hearing news of the gradual collapse of rail ...