The BeerTrain

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...

A trip to Vienna to do an OBB Nostalgiezug to Keszthely, lots of required track for an Austrian loco and planned to be an OBB 2050 diesel throughout. We flew in on the 5th for 2 nights in Vienna. Friday 06/06/2008 Some pre-breakfast moves: 2016004#  Wien Sud - Wiener Neustadt  0542 Wien Sud - Wiener Neustadt 50km                   (Via Baden) 2016004    Wiener Neustadt - Wien Sud  0632 Wiener Neustadt - Wien Sud 56km                   (Via Ebenfurth & Achau) Some new track under the wires for diesel done there. 1044064    Wien Sud - Wien Meidling 0747 Wien Sud - Passau 4km 2016043#  Wien Meidling - Wien Sud 0640 Aspang Markt - Wien Sud 4km A day with the wife doing the more touristy side of Vienna, taking in some castles and gardens along the way. Followed by a night at the Theatre to watch Ben Elton's Queen epic "We will Rock You", very good fun it was t...

I was sitting in my new local, the Heaven & Ale micro pub in the residential area of Agnes Road Barnsley, when Martin, who lives literally next door to the pub, asked me if I would like a pint. Martin lives at Number 62 Martin is Barnsley through & through, he is best known in the pub for wearing Bermuda shorts  all-year-round and in any weather. He had recently turned 60 and decided to Retire. He asked me what I do for a living so I replied that I've worked on the Railway for 33 years. Martin then said "Here - what do you reckon on this? I was working at London Waterloo station in the early 1990's refurbishing some of the offices when, due to an IRA Bomb scare, we were all stuck outside on the Station steps and the Police said we weren't getting inside today - and this bloke led everyone - and I mean EVERYONE - to a Pub and bought drinks for them all! What do you make of that?" I replied "Martin, that was me" "What was you?" he said. ...

Monday 12th January 1987 I was still living at my parents in Sittingbourne at this time. Snow had been forecast on the Sunday night, when my Dad woke me up at 0550 I asked if it had snowed? Yes a bit.  A Cuppa before we headed out to the shed for our pushbikes "why don't you go first" my Dad said.  A bit strange, he always went out ahead of me - I stepped out & the snow came up to the top of my legs! "You Git Dad!". So our normal 10 minute bike ride to work turned into a near 2 hour battle through the snow on foot! We both worked at the Smeed Dean brickworks in deepest Murston, next to Milton creek.  The whole area was once a whole host of thriving brickworks & cement factories which provided the materials for the Victorian expansion & rebuilding of London.  Just this one brickworks still going now, producing high quality, traditional London Yellow Stock Bricks. These have been used extensively throughout London & the South East for two centuries...

Following on from the success ( and Total Riot!) of our 1st tour "The Multiple Marauder" of 10/08/96, a 2nd tour, once again planned by myself using my home in Nantwich for all bookings etc. Once again we needed some points of interest to attract the crowds so the initial plan was to start from London Kings Cross and go ECML to Grantham then via Nottingham to traverse the Robin Hood line up to Worksop, a first over the route for the class. We would go round the curve Shirebrook East Jn to Shireoaks West Jn then via Sheffield (run round) then up to York for more new class 33 track through to Scarborough. After a 90 minute break a class 56 would haul us to York (Run Round) then via Harrogate, Leeds & Hambleton Jn's to Doncaster where we would swop back to our pair of class 33's and run via Gainsborough Lea Road to Newark then back on the ECML. I again did the timings for this, the tricky bit was the Harrogate Loop where due to the length of the platforms we would ha...