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 my last visit to Bavaria, with a little bit of Franconia thrown in (last visited over 17 years ago!), it was going to be a pub outing (from Heaven & Ale, Barnsley) but striking Railway workers (both here & in Germany), added to a Lufthansa ground-crew dispute put paid to that. Single manned then! Tuesday 16th April 2024 To avoid the above disputes I would have to travel down to Stansted Airport to get a (Ryanair) flight to Nuremberg, this added an additional overnight stay in Cambridge so involved an extra hotel, luckily my Priv railway passes meant this was the only additional cost involved. Unit  Barnsley - Wakefield Kirkgate 1717 Nottingham - Leeds 11miles Unit   Wakefield Kirkgate -  Wakefield Westgate 1840 Knottingley - Leeds 1mile I'd spotted that the 1945 ex Leeds was consisted with the booked class 91 so headed to Wakefield. I killed the 50 minute wait with a pint in the excellent Harrys Bar, followed by another in the quirkily...