The BeerTrain

Having moved north from London to Cheshire over a year before, I was somewhat out of position to get involved in the ongoing restoration of our loco 33111 at St.Leonards, Hastings. In the early days of owning the loco I would often spend my Saturdays, or even whole weekends, helping to restore the loco at St.Leonards Depot. After moving to Cheshire I then came up with the idea of forming a Railtour Company, through the 33/1 Preservation Group of which I was a founding member, to raise funds for the loco's restoration and have some good days out to boot! Thus 33111 Charters was born. Over a few brainstorming sessions in The Albion, Crewe, under the glare of Big Al, the Landlord, we came up with a plan. We needed to run a tour that at least made money, no good trying to raise funds for the Group then actually costing it money! To that end I decided that we would have to do something different if we wanted to get that result, something to entice the residents of the North West to book...

Where to begin? where can you begin when dealing with an all-time first for Class 33's and all the planning that goes into such a unique endeavour. I suppose at the beginning. I think it was a Tuesday night when five of us met for a beer in one of the pre-eminent Real Ale pubs of London at that time, the White Horse in Parsons Green. Myself (Poodle), Samways, Pinker, Kapur & Paul Smith. A few beers in, and the conversation drifted towards the end of the BR Special Trains Unit, which was winding down and would be handing over the reins to Watermans Railways shortly. Kapur, never one to keep the noise down after a few liveners, was outraged that the Steam fraternity were marking the occasion with a number of Steam Charters on the final weekend. I think he said there were 10 sets of stock and nine were already spoken for. Someone must do something Diesel hauled! "What can we do" I said, "We haven't even got any paper to write anything down". See that beerma...

From my early years Bashing Crompton's on the Pompey's I had made a number of good friends, many of whom still remain as such today. Indeed most are now part of the 33/1 Preservation Group, which me & Peckham jointly called the first meeting of in 1988, to see if there was enough interest to take up the reigns from the BRCW group which had recently started to go the wrong way. Several people, not living in the South-East, came down to bash every school holiday or end of college term. One of these was Andrew Dzikowskyj, from Edinburgh, who was more normally known as TZ - as most couldn't pronounce his name! He had long told me that he would form a 6LDA (or Class 26) Preservation Group. The 6LDA Group was formed by TZ in 1991 with the aim of preserving a Class 26. I was one of the 1st shareholders in the group, if only amounting to TWO shares after a cancelled 26 tour I had booked on, the money refunded from which I put into the new group. I couldn't really invest mor...