Cambridge - The 2012 version

[a good off]

I am typing this from the new platform 7. This is the first time in many years I have been to Cambridge station and back in the 80s I spent a lot of time here. In those days there were DMUs of both the Cravens and Met Cam type with the odd inter-regional interloper creeping in such as West Mids suburban unit or a Calder Valley set. There was a healthy selection of 20s,31s, 37s, 47s and latterly 305's, 310s and 86s with the odd peak chucked in for good measure. The yard seemed always busy with the resident pilot running up and down shunting the afternoon Speedlink workings plus all the parcel and mail vans.

Today admittedly the passenger service has become more frequent and the station perhaps busier with passengers. Sadly from my viewpoint here on platform 7, the empty space where the yard once was and all the other closed freight facilities give it an air of a once greater past. It doesn't have the character or variety it once did and I find it all very boring sitting here.

Hang on, an IC liveried 86 with a rake of NSE MKIIs just rolled in! Sadly just in my memories.

 

[D841 Roebuck]

Cambridge. 25 Oct 1980

Spotted the following locos in a brief visit:
08108 (now at the KESR)
08240 (cut 1985)
08862 (cut 1981)
31195 (cut 1988)
31230 (cut 2000)
37044 (now 37710, stored at Carnforth)
37084 (now 37718, back from Spain to Dollands Moor)
37109 (at the ELR)

An interesting variety of fates there!

 

[O L Leigh]

Ah, nostalgia just isn't what it used to be. I'm sure someone who had visited in the 1980s for the first time in over 30 years would have been saying much the same.

O L Leigh

 

[LE Greys]

My mum grew up near there, and can just about remember the Holden E4s (although we only identified them from a picture in Last Steam Locomotives of British Railways) on trains from Linton. She often travelled to London behind a Britannia or B17, Liverpool Street of course, although King's Cross was better for getting to shows. There it might be a B1. The trains had buffets in the formation.

I myself remember the '80s as being the time when everyone had to get out at Royston, walk down the platform, and get in a little 101 for the last part of the journey. OK in the summer, but a complete pain in the backside on a wet winter Saturday. Still, I did spot my first 86 there.

 

[Robinson]

Ah, nostalgia just isn't what it used to be. I'm sure someone who had visited in the 1980s for the first time in over 30 years would have been saying much the same.

O L Leigh

And no doubt many years from now someone somewhere will be saying "Look how good those old class 170s were"...

 

[LE Greys]

And no doubt many years from now someone somewhere will be saying "Look how good those old class 170s were"...

How many people in 1938 said 'Look how good those Atlantics were!'? Not many. 'Why's that?' I wonder. (For a clue, look left)

 

[Techniquest]

And no doubt many years from now someone somewhere will be saying "Look how good those old class 170s were"...

That'll be strange, but yes I can see myself doing that when I'm in my rocking chair muttering about trips to Cambridge on ALRs in 2011 and 2012. Cambridge just isn't the same now the new platforms have been put in, it's all different to my first visit to the area way back when in October 2006 on The Sandblower.

As the saying goes, today's mundane is tomorrow's nostalgia...

 

[317666]

Having lived in Cambridge for 16 years, I can definitely say it's changed a lot even over just the past few years. I remember all the variants of WAGN livery on the 317s, NSE on them as well as the 365s, 156s in Regional Railways 'Express' livery, 158s being fairly regular on Stansted - Birmingham trains (which used to continue on to Liverpool), 150s on Cambridge - Ipswich runs and 153s still in Regional Railways livery, 365s pre-rebuild, all the 170s when they were brand new in Anglia Railways and Central Trains colours, and best of all, no 379s!