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...

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...

Although I started the noble art of Trainspotting at the age of 13 (or roughly September 1978) this mainly involved after school visits to Sittingbourne railway station & Saturday daytrips to Gillingham (Kent) where most of the loco's from Hoo Jn would stable at the weekend, plus the EMU depot there would be stacked out with units. It wasn't until my 16th Birthday that I was allowed out on weekend trips to the more far-flung parts of the UK! This would see me depart after my paper round Saturday morning and would often involve an overnight at places like Doncaster, Crewe or Bristol where a stream of overnight trains & newspaper/mail trains meant the station buffets were open all night. Sometimes overnight trains were involved - if I could make them part of my ticket's validity of course. It wasn't until the January snows of 1987 in Kent where I felt the need to start Bashing my favourite class 33's in earnest as their sphere of operations were starting to de...