So, here's my next adventure. It was 45135 of this parish that accompanied me, so I've no doubt he can correct any errors I may have made.
Anyway, here goes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It had now been 6 years since any of us had done an all-liner and we had all assumed that they were a thing of the past.
Then one day a couple of us started reminiscing and the conversation turned to what we would do if we went out now.
"Well, there’s still a few loco hauled turns, especially electric hauled ones".
"We could experience a sleeper as it’s meant to be done, rather than dossing on the cushions."
"Mk1 based EMUs are in their final years on the former Southern region"
"we could do a few lines that have never been on our radar before".
Hmmm.
I don’t know who suggested it first, but suddenly we were on.
The date for the first of our 2nd generation of all line rovers was set. We would begin on Saturday the 7th of June.
One thing that I decided to do on this move that I hadn’t done before was record any units we travelled on. HSTs were still verboten, though.
And so the big day dawned, I began by doing 321901 from Wakefield to Leeds, met my mate there and headed up to Shipley on 308164.
Our first loco hauled (well, pushed) service was the Bradford Forster Square to Kings Cross train which had 91009 providing the power and this was done to the capital.
At that time, there was a Weymouth – Bristol diagram that was booked a 37 and we made it our mission to have a run on this.
We began by walking to Kings Cross Thameslink and getting 319181 to London Bridge, then VEP & CEP combination 3471 & 1549 London Bridge to Charing Cross, followed by CIGs 1877 & 1811 Charing Cross to Waterloo East.
At Waterloo, the 50s ruled no more on the Exeter services and so we had to make do with 159016 & 159019, which we did to Basingstoke.
At last our diesel loco drought could be brought to an end and we did a cross country service, powered by 47805, down to Weymouth.
When the Bristol service arrived it had 37416 as the traction. Very nice. We enjoyed this throughout, although perhaps not quite as much as the young couple who disappeared into the toilet together for 20 minutes en-route!
After Bristol we did 158841 round to Cardiff.
Saturday nights no longer had a string of services and so we had decided to do an overnight track bash on the Paddington to Fishguard boat train.
This was a HST, but other than fork out for a B & B we felt we had no option. At least there was some new track to be had.
I have no record of the power cars involved but I know that everyone was turfed off at Swansea on the outward service and put onto another set. I don’t know if this was what they always did, or if it was unusual.
Anyway, Fishguard was duly roped in at some unearthly hour of the Sunday morning and then we stayed on board for the run back to Paddington (not unusual according to the guard, it seems it was regularly a travelling doss house for cranks.).
Sleep in a Mk3 with those awful fixed armrests proved very difficult and we arrived in the capital bleary eyed and looking to get some shut-eye on the first decent stock of the day.
It was now Sunday and the plan was to head up to the Midlands.
The Birmingham area was playing host to engineering work and thus some dragging entertainment was to be had.
We got some of that much needed sleep travelling North behind 47825 (later 57601), which was done from Paddington to Nuneaton. The first drag engine that we encountered was 47785, gleaming in newly applied EWS livery. On its bodyside it carried a nameplate, but this was covered with bin bags as it was to be named later in the week. We did this to New St, then 47762 back, followed by another run on 47785. By now, the bin bags had partially come off and the name “Fiona Castle” could be seen. “Where’s that?” I thought. D’oh!
Here is 47785, the state of the nameplate covering at this point is unknown:
47785_1997.06.08_a_Birmingham by philwood55013, on Flickr
With only two locos out on the drags and with a night at home planned, we decided to start the journey North.
86253 was taken to Wolverhampton, followed by 86255 to Crewe.
DMU 156406 was taken over to Stoke and a split journey was done to Manchester, 87032 & 86229 to and then from Macclesfield.
From Manchester it was 158811 to Dewsbury. Why Dewsbury? I’ve no idea, presumably it was either railway engineering or dodgy Sunday bus timetable related.
Monday the 9th was ED day. The day in every all-liner when 73s on the Gatwick Express were to be enjoyed. I boarded 91022 at Wakefield and met my mate who had got on at Leeds. For the second time that week we did the stroll from Kings Cross to Kings Cross Thameslink and jumped aboard 319021 to London Bridge.
456023 was then taken to Victoria and we were ready to rock and roll. Neither of us required any of the 73/2s for haulage, but they still had to be done. 73209/204 & 210 were enjoyed, but the timetable had gone to pot and we didn’t have time for any more as we were heading to the North coast of Wales.
47829 was done to Kensington Olympia, followed by 313014 to Willesden (High Level) and 313017 (Low Level) to Euston.
We staggered our run up to Crewe, getting 86236 to Coventry, 47827 to Brum, 86255 to Stafford and finally 87033.
At Crewe we realised that we had time to get back to Stafford in order to pick up the Euston – Holyhead service and so 47810 was taken South. The Holyhead train had 90007 on the front and this obviously came off at Crewe for diesel power. I was extremely happy to see 47501 back on to the stock.
My first winner of the week!
The nocturnal run behind 47501 was one of the highlights of the week. Great fun.
After the highs come the lows and in our case it was a couple of hours hanging around Holyhead station in the middle of the night. It wasn’t that we were bothered by ne’er do wells or anything, just that we were tired and, even in June, it was a bit nippy.
Finally, we were on the move, doing the early hours Holyhead – Birmingham International service, in the capable hands of 37417. We stayed on throughout and managed to get plenty of doss on the way.
Having been in Wales at the start of the day, we needed to be in Scotland by the end of it. We had taken the plunge and booked a couple of beds on the Fort William sleeper.
After doing 323213 to New St it was one of my favourite 86s, 86260 “Driver Wallace Oakes G.C.” to Glasgow Central.
Our journey up to the Fort was then on 314213 from Central Low Level to Dalmuir and 156465 (with 156436 keeping it company as far as Cianlarich).
After arriving at Fort William we went for a pub meal before boarding the sleeper. My old friend 37404 was the steed and we were in clover. Having never experienced the “posh” part of a sleeper before, we revelled in the lounge car experience. We sat back as the train trundled over Rannoch Moor and we enjoyed a glass of single malt whisky and a Cuban cigar. Yes, it was all perfectly legal back then!
After our hedonistic evening we retired to our beds and neither of us was disturbed by the loco change, which now took place at Edinburgh.
This is 37404 waiting at Fort William to take a couple of hedonists South:
37404_1997.06.10_Fort William by philwood55013, on Flickr
It was only after we arrived at Euston that we managed to identify our overnight power as being 87022.
The 11th of June was to bring another first, this time we were going to do the East Anglian loco hauled services out of Liverpool St. We had both had most of the 86s that were now based there when they were WCML locos but had never seen our way to getting the Southern end of the Anglian main line in on previous rovers.
First up was 86223, which was on the boat train to Harwich Parkeston Quay, a nice non-stop run.
The return service did have a stop at Colchester and so it was the same loco back to there.
We followed this up by a few round trips to Ipswich and back, utilising 86218/86232/86238 & 86246 before we completed the line by doing 86235 to Norwich. The erstwhile “Novelty” was then done throughout to Liverpool St.
We were now heading home for the second time that week. Two nights at home, how our hygiene had improved! Liverpool St to Kings Cross was done in a somewhat convoluted manner, doing 315836/315807 to Stratford, 313020 from the low level platforms to Highbury, 313059 to Moorgate, 313033/313035 to Finsbury Park and 317362 into the Cross.
We jumped aboard the first reasonable service Northbound and this was 91022, which we took to Doncaster, doing the last 20 miles to Wakefield on 91019.
The plan for Thursday was to head back to South Wales, more specifically to Rhymney. I did 144004 from Wakefield to Leeds and met up with my travelling companion to head over the Pennines. 158807 was endured to Manchester and it was back to proper motive power with 47826 being taken from Piccadilly to Birmingham New Street. We had a bit of time to kill before the next 47 hauled service South, so we did 323212 out to Bescot to view the depot, returning on 323219.
My all time highest mileage loco, 47840 “North Star” was taken down to Bristol Temple Meads and in a repeat of Saturday’s move it was a 158 round to Cardiff. This time it was 158815.
At this time there was only a single loco hauled diagram on the Cardiff – Rhymney line, out in the evening rush hour and back in the morning. In another flashback to Saturday, the loco tonight was 37416. Thankfully there was no repeat of any on board fornicating shenanigans, though.
Rhymney was an eye opener. As we hung around the station waiting for the DMU back, we were approached by two young lads who looked at us in awe and said “Are you from CARDIFF?” We informed them that we were, in fact, from a land beyond Cardiff and they went off looking gobsmacked. They got on their bikes and shot off. We were a bit worried in case a mob of people with pitchforks should come to chase us off.
After a while our unit arrived, 150269, and it was back to the mystical land of Cardiff.
From there it was an unrecorded HST to Newport, 158868 to Bristol and another HST to Exeter.
At this time, the “Night Riviera” sleeper service was running into and out of Waterloo, ostensibly to connect with Eurostar services, although how many people actually made that journey I couldn’t say. Perhaps it’s just enough to note that it wasn’t too long before it was back at its proper home of Paddington. Anyway 47816 was tonight’s power and we slept on the cushions all the way to London.
One advantage of Waterloo is that it’s a shorter walk to Waterloo East from there than it is from Paddington.
This was useful as we intended to get some track in around Kent. All our previous visits to that area had been on railtours so this was a good opportunity to fill in some gaps and hopefully have a ride on some more of the aging MK1 EMUs.
This we achieved, doing VEP 3445 Waterloo East to Ramsgate, followed by its sister 3451 to Chatham. After this it was more modern stock, 466023 to Dartford, 465241 to London Bridge and 466008 to Cannon Street.
The move was now coming to an end, but we had a big finish in mind and so it was the underground to Paddington and a tram to Cardiff in order to pick up the Fridays only 37 hauled service to Manchester. The beast that is 37427 was the last loco of the move and we thoroughly enjoyed the front coach thrash as we did the service throughout.
All that remained was to get home and we did this by doing 158902 to Leeds, where we went our separate ways with me finishing up by doing 156470 to Wakefield.
On the run behind 37427 we had discussed the move and decided that it had very much been a success. So, this was it, all-liners were back on the agenda for the foreseeable future.
Three months later, I was on another one.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So there we go, hope the novelty hasn't worn off yet.
Cheers,
55013
Anyway, here goes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It had now been 6 years since any of us had done an all-liner and we had all assumed that they were a thing of the past.
Then one day a couple of us started reminiscing and the conversation turned to what we would do if we went out now.
"Well, there’s still a few loco hauled turns, especially electric hauled ones".
"We could experience a sleeper as it’s meant to be done, rather than dossing on the cushions."
"Mk1 based EMUs are in their final years on the former Southern region"
"we could do a few lines that have never been on our radar before".
Hmmm.
I don’t know who suggested it first, but suddenly we were on.
The date for the first of our 2nd generation of all line rovers was set. We would begin on Saturday the 7th of June.
One thing that I decided to do on this move that I hadn’t done before was record any units we travelled on. HSTs were still verboten, though.
And so the big day dawned, I began by doing 321901 from Wakefield to Leeds, met my mate there and headed up to Shipley on 308164.
Our first loco hauled (well, pushed) service was the Bradford Forster Square to Kings Cross train which had 91009 providing the power and this was done to the capital.
At that time, there was a Weymouth – Bristol diagram that was booked a 37 and we made it our mission to have a run on this.
We began by walking to Kings Cross Thameslink and getting 319181 to London Bridge, then VEP & CEP combination 3471 & 1549 London Bridge to Charing Cross, followed by CIGs 1877 & 1811 Charing Cross to Waterloo East.
At Waterloo, the 50s ruled no more on the Exeter services and so we had to make do with 159016 & 159019, which we did to Basingstoke.
At last our diesel loco drought could be brought to an end and we did a cross country service, powered by 47805, down to Weymouth.
When the Bristol service arrived it had 37416 as the traction. Very nice. We enjoyed this throughout, although perhaps not quite as much as the young couple who disappeared into the toilet together for 20 minutes en-route!
After Bristol we did 158841 round to Cardiff.
Saturday nights no longer had a string of services and so we had decided to do an overnight track bash on the Paddington to Fishguard boat train.
This was a HST, but other than fork out for a B & B we felt we had no option. At least there was some new track to be had.
I have no record of the power cars involved but I know that everyone was turfed off at Swansea on the outward service and put onto another set. I don’t know if this was what they always did, or if it was unusual.
Anyway, Fishguard was duly roped in at some unearthly hour of the Sunday morning and then we stayed on board for the run back to Paddington (not unusual according to the guard, it seems it was regularly a travelling doss house for cranks.).
Sleep in a Mk3 with those awful fixed armrests proved very difficult and we arrived in the capital bleary eyed and looking to get some shut-eye on the first decent stock of the day.
It was now Sunday and the plan was to head up to the Midlands.
The Birmingham area was playing host to engineering work and thus some dragging entertainment was to be had.
We got some of that much needed sleep travelling North behind 47825 (later 57601), which was done from Paddington to Nuneaton. The first drag engine that we encountered was 47785, gleaming in newly applied EWS livery. On its bodyside it carried a nameplate, but this was covered with bin bags as it was to be named later in the week. We did this to New St, then 47762 back, followed by another run on 47785. By now, the bin bags had partially come off and the name “Fiona Castle” could be seen. “Where’s that?” I thought. D’oh!
Here is 47785, the state of the nameplate covering at this point is unknown:
47785_1997.06.08_a_Birmingham by philwood55013, on FlickrWith only two locos out on the drags and with a night at home planned, we decided to start the journey North.
86253 was taken to Wolverhampton, followed by 86255 to Crewe.
DMU 156406 was taken over to Stoke and a split journey was done to Manchester, 87032 & 86229 to and then from Macclesfield.
From Manchester it was 158811 to Dewsbury. Why Dewsbury? I’ve no idea, presumably it was either railway engineering or dodgy Sunday bus timetable related.
Monday the 9th was ED day. The day in every all-liner when 73s on the Gatwick Express were to be enjoyed. I boarded 91022 at Wakefield and met my mate who had got on at Leeds. For the second time that week we did the stroll from Kings Cross to Kings Cross Thameslink and jumped aboard 319021 to London Bridge.
456023 was then taken to Victoria and we were ready to rock and roll. Neither of us required any of the 73/2s for haulage, but they still had to be done. 73209/204 & 210 were enjoyed, but the timetable had gone to pot and we didn’t have time for any more as we were heading to the North coast of Wales.
47829 was done to Kensington Olympia, followed by 313014 to Willesden (High Level) and 313017 (Low Level) to Euston.
We staggered our run up to Crewe, getting 86236 to Coventry, 47827 to Brum, 86255 to Stafford and finally 87033.
At Crewe we realised that we had time to get back to Stafford in order to pick up the Euston – Holyhead service and so 47810 was taken South. The Holyhead train had 90007 on the front and this obviously came off at Crewe for diesel power. I was extremely happy to see 47501 back on to the stock.
My first winner of the week!
The nocturnal run behind 47501 was one of the highlights of the week. Great fun.
After the highs come the lows and in our case it was a couple of hours hanging around Holyhead station in the middle of the night. It wasn’t that we were bothered by ne’er do wells or anything, just that we were tired and, even in June, it was a bit nippy.
Finally, we were on the move, doing the early hours Holyhead – Birmingham International service, in the capable hands of 37417. We stayed on throughout and managed to get plenty of doss on the way.
Having been in Wales at the start of the day, we needed to be in Scotland by the end of it. We had taken the plunge and booked a couple of beds on the Fort William sleeper.
After doing 323213 to New St it was one of my favourite 86s, 86260 “Driver Wallace Oakes G.C.” to Glasgow Central.
Our journey up to the Fort was then on 314213 from Central Low Level to Dalmuir and 156465 (with 156436 keeping it company as far as Cianlarich).
After arriving at Fort William we went for a pub meal before boarding the sleeper. My old friend 37404 was the steed and we were in clover. Having never experienced the “posh” part of a sleeper before, we revelled in the lounge car experience. We sat back as the train trundled over Rannoch Moor and we enjoyed a glass of single malt whisky and a Cuban cigar. Yes, it was all perfectly legal back then!
After our hedonistic evening we retired to our beds and neither of us was disturbed by the loco change, which now took place at Edinburgh.
This is 37404 waiting at Fort William to take a couple of hedonists South:
37404_1997.06.10_Fort William by philwood55013, on FlickrIt was only after we arrived at Euston that we managed to identify our overnight power as being 87022.
The 11th of June was to bring another first, this time we were going to do the East Anglian loco hauled services out of Liverpool St. We had both had most of the 86s that were now based there when they were WCML locos but had never seen our way to getting the Southern end of the Anglian main line in on previous rovers.
First up was 86223, which was on the boat train to Harwich Parkeston Quay, a nice non-stop run.
The return service did have a stop at Colchester and so it was the same loco back to there.
We followed this up by a few round trips to Ipswich and back, utilising 86218/86232/86238 & 86246 before we completed the line by doing 86235 to Norwich. The erstwhile “Novelty” was then done throughout to Liverpool St.
We were now heading home for the second time that week. Two nights at home, how our hygiene had improved! Liverpool St to Kings Cross was done in a somewhat convoluted manner, doing 315836/315807 to Stratford, 313020 from the low level platforms to Highbury, 313059 to Moorgate, 313033/313035 to Finsbury Park and 317362 into the Cross.
We jumped aboard the first reasonable service Northbound and this was 91022, which we took to Doncaster, doing the last 20 miles to Wakefield on 91019.
The plan for Thursday was to head back to South Wales, more specifically to Rhymney. I did 144004 from Wakefield to Leeds and met up with my travelling companion to head over the Pennines. 158807 was endured to Manchester and it was back to proper motive power with 47826 being taken from Piccadilly to Birmingham New Street. We had a bit of time to kill before the next 47 hauled service South, so we did 323212 out to Bescot to view the depot, returning on 323219.
My all time highest mileage loco, 47840 “North Star” was taken down to Bristol Temple Meads and in a repeat of Saturday’s move it was a 158 round to Cardiff. This time it was 158815.
At this time there was only a single loco hauled diagram on the Cardiff – Rhymney line, out in the evening rush hour and back in the morning. In another flashback to Saturday, the loco tonight was 37416. Thankfully there was no repeat of any on board fornicating shenanigans, though.
Rhymney was an eye opener. As we hung around the station waiting for the DMU back, we were approached by two young lads who looked at us in awe and said “Are you from CARDIFF?” We informed them that we were, in fact, from a land beyond Cardiff and they went off looking gobsmacked. They got on their bikes and shot off. We were a bit worried in case a mob of people with pitchforks should come to chase us off.
After a while our unit arrived, 150269, and it was back to the mystical land of Cardiff.
From there it was an unrecorded HST to Newport, 158868 to Bristol and another HST to Exeter.
At this time, the “Night Riviera” sleeper service was running into and out of Waterloo, ostensibly to connect with Eurostar services, although how many people actually made that journey I couldn’t say. Perhaps it’s just enough to note that it wasn’t too long before it was back at its proper home of Paddington. Anyway 47816 was tonight’s power and we slept on the cushions all the way to London.
One advantage of Waterloo is that it’s a shorter walk to Waterloo East from there than it is from Paddington.
This was useful as we intended to get some track in around Kent. All our previous visits to that area had been on railtours so this was a good opportunity to fill in some gaps and hopefully have a ride on some more of the aging MK1 EMUs.
This we achieved, doing VEP 3445 Waterloo East to Ramsgate, followed by its sister 3451 to Chatham. After this it was more modern stock, 466023 to Dartford, 465241 to London Bridge and 466008 to Cannon Street.
The move was now coming to an end, but we had a big finish in mind and so it was the underground to Paddington and a tram to Cardiff in order to pick up the Fridays only 37 hauled service to Manchester. The beast that is 37427 was the last loco of the move and we thoroughly enjoyed the front coach thrash as we did the service throughout.
All that remained was to get home and we did this by doing 158902 to Leeds, where we went our separate ways with me finishing up by doing 156470 to Wakefield.
On the run behind 37427 we had discussed the move and decided that it had very much been a success. So, this was it, all-liners were back on the agenda for the foreseeable future.
Three months later, I was on another one.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So there we go, hope the novelty hasn't worn off yet.
Cheers,
55013
Last edited:
Perhaps you'll have to get on another rover soon to have one to talk about? 
