Innehållsförteckning för November 2023 från Rail Express

HEADLINE NEWS HIGH Speed Trains were withdrawn by CrossCountry during September, with the final service train operating on September 18, followed by a farewell charter on September 26. The HST fleet, of which there were 12 Class 43 power cars and 40 Mk.3 coaches, was withdrawn following a decision by the Department for Transport (DfT) over costs. Within the existing XC contract held by Arriva, the HSTs, of which two saw use, on average per day, there was no planned replacement, with redeployment of Class 220/221 Voyagers required. A new National Rail Contract announced on August 31 (see separate story), has since confirmed seven ‘221s’ will move to XC. The final service was the 1E73 16.27 Plymouth-Leeds, powered by Nos. 43007/008 in their HST blue and yellow and InterCity Swallow…

BOND Street was temporarily renamed Burberry Street during September, in a move which brought Transport for London (TfL) criticism. Claims were made that the week-long sponsorship exercise to denote London Fashion Week, was a TfL “money-making stunt”. Other articles framed this as “corporation creep” or even enquired “what were TfL thinking?”. Given that temporary station renaming events have been almost parodies of the genuine name in the past, is this criticism valid? Commercial adverts encouraging passengers to purchase products or services have been part of the London Underground (LU) from the earliest days of the Metropolitan and District Railways. Over time such adverts were introduced onto rolling stock. Entire Sub-Surface C-Stock trains and 73 Tube Stock were covered in branded vinyl for Yellow Pages and United Airlines respectively during the…

RAILWAY Support Services (RSS) has again turned to the world of preservation to bolster its shunter fleet, with the hire of privately-owned No. 08706. The locomotive departed the Colne Valley Railway (CVR) in late August for an exam at Wishaw before moving on to Garston on August 31. Still in tatty EWS colours, it duly replaced No. 08580 on marshalling the automotive traffic at the Merseyside yard, allowing the latter to move south to Wishaw for maintenance. No. 08706 had only arrived at the CVR back in April following its purchase from Harry Needle Railroad Company and restoration to operational condition at Shackerstone. Also out on hire once more is the Avon Valley Railway’s No. 08663, the railway making good on its statement from 2019 that the shunter would have…

IARNRÓD Éireann (IE) and Latvia-based DiGas Group have signed a €1.5 million contract to test the feasibility of hydrogen as an alternative power for its locomotive fleet. The GM 071 Class locomotives are fitted with 2450hp 645-12 two-stroke power units, and this will be modified to use hydrogen to test feasibility and cost effectiveness of such a project. IE is confident that the project will be successful, stating that “the collaboration will demonstrate a practical path towards complete decarbonisation of the diesel locomotive fleet and all design and testing will be subject to approval from the Commission for Railway Regulation (CRR)”. IE will provide one of its 18-strong GM 071 Class and workshop facilities, while DiGas will design, manufacture and install the retrofit equipment and oversee the commissioning. The two-year…

MODELLING A BRACE of Class 40s were announced by Hornby for its 2022 catalogue, with the models arriving this August. Both use the bodyshell tooling with train reporting discs and marker lights which are cosmetic mouldings on both models. They remain popular with modellers and with a list price below £100 and discounted to around £87, they are the perfect base for a budget modelling project. Both models are part of the ‘Railroad Plus’ range which means they have a generally better livery application. The BR green model finished as No. D210 Empress of Britain (originally listed as No. D232 Empress of Canada) is supplied with metal nameplates. The second model fits a small slice of time in 1986, being dressed as departmental No. 97407 Aureol with white embellishments and…

PRIME Minister Rishi Sunak used his speech at the Conservative Party conference on October 4, to formally cancel the construction of HS2 north of Birmingham. Speaking in Manchester, he said “facts had changed” surrounding the project, telling the conference: “What we really need, though, is better transport connections in the North. “A new Network North that will join up our great towns and cities in the North and the Midlands. “I wanted to come here to Manchester today, to say that this will be our priority, our focus, our project. HS2 is the ultimate example of the old consensus. The result is a project whose costs have more than doubled, which has been repeatedly delayed and it is not scheduled to reach here in Manchester for almost two decades and…

THE transfer of more Class 707s to Southeastern in recent weeks has led to further Class 465 and 466 electric multiple units being taken out of service and sent away to Harry Needle Railroad Company’s Worksop site for storage. The ‘707s’, have been given the City Beam brand by Southeastern, and are replacing the Metro-Cammell built Class 465/9 and ‘466’ EMUs, that, unlike the York-built ‘465/0’ and ‘465/1’ fleets which received new Hitachi equipment, retain their original traction packages that are now over 30 years old. During September, 12 sets were taken from Gillingham to Worksop yard by Rail Operations Group No. 37884 Cepheus, details below: September 4 – 465918, 466033September 7 – 465905, 466013September 15 – 465933, 466001September 18 – 465931, 466017September 21 – 465920, 466009September 28 – 465921,…

MORE than 26 years after it was stopped for overhaul, the Deltic Preservation Society’s No. D9015 (55015) Tulyar has been reunited with its bogies and power units at Barrow Hill. The Deltic, which had been on stands for almost 10 years, received its bogies on August 29, and this enabled the locomotive to be moved out of the DPS depot a few days later for the first time since 2013. On September 12, two power units were installed in the locomotive, one of which now fitted to Tulyar was originally in the locomotive when new. This engine most recently saw use in No. D9009 (55009) Alycidon but was removed for the fitting of an overhauled generator when that locomotive failed in 2019. The other power unit, which also last ran…

ROLLING stock provider Riviera Trains (RT), has offered recompense to UK Railtours (UKR) after it supplied two vehicles in which the air conditioning was inoperative, leading to uncomfortable conditions for passengers. The affected railtour was UKR’s ‘The Anglian Angel’, which ran on September 9. The two Mk.2fs were Tourist Standard Opens (TSOs) Nos. 6024 and 6054. Another incident of a carriage with the air-conditioning equipment not operating occurred on July 29, this time on Pathfinder Tours’ ‘The Capital Deltic Reprise’. This was Mk.2f TSO No. 5921. UKR’s Liz Morris issued this statement: “Further to our email communication of Monday September 11, regarding the air conditioning issues aboard ‘The Anglian Angel’, we’ve now received a response from our rolling stock providers, Riviera Trains Limited. Riviera Trains have asked us to pass…

THE decision to introduce High Speed Trains on Table 51, as the cross-country routes were once known, came in 1978, when the British Railways Board identified a need for 36 sets which would enable a large proportion of services to be converted to InterCity 125 operation in two phases. At the time, most trains on the route were operated using a mix of Mk.1 and early Mk.2 rolling stock, so the desire to upgrade was obvious. Unfortunately, the Department of Transport (DoT), which held the purse strings, did not share the BRB’s enthusiasm, and authorisation for only the first 18 sets was given, and while the power cars which were introduced on the cross-country network from 1981 onwards were new, around half of the coaches had previously been used on…

MORE AND MORE brand-new models, together with a swathe of reissued favourites, are arriving at model shops at quite a rate, and things do not appear to be easing up as the last quarter of 2023 is reached. The hotly anticipated Heljan ‘OO’ gauge GWR parcels car was reported as having arrived when this issue went to press, accompanied by the latest batch of the Class 25/3 which will be reviewed in the next issue. The last Class 37 of Batch 1 of the Accurascale ‘Tractor’ range comprising of the first Class 37/0s was also imminent. Revolution Trains has taken delivery of several long-running projects including Mk.5 sleeper stock and four-wheel PFA container flats in ‘N’ gauge, along with the Southern Region General Manager’s Saloon in ‘OO’ gauge. Southern Electric…

VTG Rail has started the network trial of the first digital freight wagon in Britain. A four-month test began on October 2, with the first modified wagons operating on a daily Dunbar-Seaham cement train circuit. The VTG iWagon is designed to introduce new and significant safety capabilities, as well as introducing operational efficiencies and improved availability. A nine-wagon trial will initially focus on technology being made available through a collaboration between VTG and Knorr-Bremse. The first three wagons to be fitted are VTG Rail JPA tank wagons which have been modified at Tarmac’s maintenance depot at Dunbar. Other wagons to be equipped with the technology will be deployed on Hanson and Mendip Rail fleets. Features of the trial include axle lock detection and Wheel Flat Prevention (WFP) technology. This is…

THE fleet of 30 DB Cargo UK ‘Stegosaurus’ open coil carriers, rebuilt from the distinctive Thrall Europaconstructed BYA ‘Nissan Hut’ covered variants in 2021, will be boosted with the addition of a further 40 conversions that will be processed at DBC’s wagon maintenance facility at Stoke-on-Trent. Notably, having completed prototype No. 966050 in March 2021, with eight equally-spaced bolted trapezoidal extensions per side for coil loading, the first production batch of 29 wagons was initially released into traffic as slab carriers with bolsters and four heavy duty vertical stakes. However, by the end of 2022 they had been reconfigured with the trapezoidal extensions in a 1+3+3+1 format to carry coils over each bogie and one mounted in the centre. The new conversions will be drawn from the operational vehicles that…

CLASS 20 Out of action since March, Locomotive Services’ Type 1s Nos. D8096 (20096) and D8107 (20107) Jocelyn Fielding 1940-2020 were hauled from Crewe to Barrow Hill behind No. D1924 (47810) Crewe Diesel Depot on September 22. Meanwhile, later that morning LSL Nos. 20118 Saltburn-by-the-Sea and 20132 left Barrow Hill bound for Worksop, where they collected Harry Needle Railroad Company Nos. 20302/311 before returning to Barrow Hill. During the early afternoon, Nos. 20118/132 and 47810 set off for Crewe, running via Burton-on-Trent and Lichfield Trent Valley. CLASS 33 An inspection tour of stations in London using saloon No. 999506 ran on September 29, ‘top and tailed’ by West Coast Railways ‘Cromptons’ Nos. 33029 and 33207 Jim Martin. Having set off from Southall for Maidenhead, the first duty was the 2Z01…

IN early-September, TransPennine Express confirmed that the Nova 3 fleet would be removed from traffic (RE329). Ordered when First Group took sole charge of the trans-Pennine franchise in April 2016, the plan was that CAF would deliver 66 Mk.5A coaches, formed into 13 five-coach sets, with traction supplied by brand-new Class 68s subleased from Direct Rail Services (DRS). The locomotive-hauled trains were branded Nova 3 as they were to be the first of the three new fleets ordered by TPE to enter traffic, to be followed by the CAF Class 397s (Nova 2s) and Hitachi Class 802/2s (Nova 1s). The thinking behind the Mk.5As was that TPE would take advantage of the ongoing order for Mk.5s from Caledonian Sleeper and so would be able to get the stock into traffic…

REVIEW 00 GAUGE 4mm:1ft 2007 to present ERA Northern liveries CLASS 156s have been part of the northern railway scene since their introduction from 1988 onwards. Today, Northern (Northern Trains) operates 65 units on a variety of services throughout its network, some of which are relatively recently transferred from East Midlands Railway and ScotRail (it should be noted that allocations can vary within the currency of a franchise). Realtrack Models has responded to the popularity of the Northern Rail subject by releasing more of its excellent ‘OO’ gauge Class 156 model in both liveries. The first standard Northern (Northern Rail Serco-Abellio franchise) livery is available on two models and dates from around 2007/08, whilst Northern by Arriva livery (Arriva Rail North franchise), also applied to two models, dates after 2016…

REVIEW N GAUGE 2mm:1ft 1982 to 2004 ERA Unique hopper design CONSTRUCTED BY Fauvet Girel and introduced in the summer of 1982, the 35 PBA wagons were instantly recognisable by their rounded hopper design mounted on a 60-foot long underframe. TOPS code PBA was first applied along with the TRL1160011634 number sequence. The wagons had a capacity of 56t and a laden capacity of 80t allowing them to work comfortably over china clay branch lines and into works sites with less than perfect track. The long top hatch was designed for rapid loading using large capacity mechanical shovels, usually from modern covered loading banks and storage areas. Its versatility also allowed them to be loaded at older works too. The PBAs could be observed in many parts of the UK…