No Steam here

[littlebro 234]

I cannot add this to the 'Steam' thread so I have started this for the non-steam era

Image of the Midland Pullman at Beeston on the St Pancras to Nottingham service, the Victoria Hotel in the background.

The image is from around 1961.

[StephenFord 866]

Very nice. I'm not sure, but I think 2P59 was the 16.54 or 17.00 or 17.02 (depending on the year) Nottingham - Darley Dale stopper. It ran in much the same timings from way back in the days of steam. The opposite working was the 06.35 from Darley Dale, getting into Nottingham at 08.18 I seem to remember. It provided workers' transport to Derby Loco and Carriage Works, as well as office staff travelling into Nottingham. For many years it was the same set of 7 non-corridor coaches, day in, day out. This pair were amongst the few local trains that continued to be loco-hauled after the DMUs were introduced in March (I think) 1958 - the reasoning, I guess, being that provided around 650 seats (6-a-side in non-corridor compartments).

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

Always did reserve the decaying old stock for the workers.

[StephenFord 866]

Ah, one of the old Birmingham RC&W units. I always thought they were a cut above the more numerous Cravens units, with their low-backed seats and deafeningly vibrating windows. The Cravens really were the pits.

[Merthyr Imp 729]

Here's a view of a Cravens unit from the 1980s. I thought the best ones were the Derby units like the one coupled to this.

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

When I was carriage cleaning in the late 70s I preferred the 3-car Swindon sets.

[Cliff Ton 10,454]

Probably not quite what was envisaged in this thread, but........this is Margate Pier in the mid 60s. Loco clearly based on a Warship class.

[littlebro 234]

[Ashley 288]

"I cannot add this to the 'Steam' thread so I have started this for the non-steam era" Blasphemy! lol

[Merthyr Imp 729]

When I was carriage cleaning in the late 70s I preferred the 3-car Swindon sets.

As seen on the left here? Photo taken probably around 1980 at Lincoln St Marks station (now the site of a shopping area, although the station building survives).

It looks as if the first class area - denoted by the yellow band above the windows - was still in use as such at that time, but it can't have been too much later that they downgraded it to be used by all passengers. With the 'two and one' seating and the deeper padded seats I always used to try and get in that area on my journeys back from Lincoln.

[StephenFord 866]

Yes, they were great. They arrived unannounced (as far as the public were concerned) in October 1968. I went to work, Sawley Junction to Derby, on a Cravens in the morning, and came back home the same evening on a Swindon 120. Their big problem was that they were heavily insulated with blue asbestos (they were not unique in this however).

[Merthyr Imp 729]

Yes, they were great. They arrived unannounced (as far as the public were concerned) in October 1968. I went to work, Sawley Junction to Derby, on a Cravens in the morning, and came back home the same evening on a Swindon 120. Their big problem was that they were heavily insulated with blue asbestos (they were not unique in this however).

Here's another one. Taken at Stoke around the same period.

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

They were easier to clean both inside and out. By the late 70s some of the older units were getting really tatty on the inside.

Later on as a shunter I found out that DMUs had coupling codes, although most of those in the Midlands were compatible. They had 2 vacuum pipes, one of which you had to go in the cab and release the pressure (28 inches of mercury) before you could pull it off the dummy.

[BulwellBrian 107]

Most DMU's had mechanical transmission and had a blue square code above the buffers. The ones I traveled from St Albans to St Pancras were hydraulic transmission and had a red star code.

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

Don't like the pink buffer beam.

Good days when we used to couple everything manually. Hard work but I loved the old nuts and bolts railway work.

When the 150s came out and all the modern electronic prototypes there were problems. Quite often one unit decided it didn't want to be compatible with another when it should have done. Others just shut down when coupled to another and steadfastly refused to start up again. Then doors refused to shut, and when that happened there was no traction. I even remember two units that tried to go opposite directions when coupled.

I've seen big tough locomen who spent years working on steam locos in atrocious conditions nearly in tears of frustration with modern units.

There were dangers in the old systems.

Every night loco hauled carriages were checked for worn out brake blocks. The examiners would pull the strings under the carriage to release the vacuum brakes. The front carriage would be scotched and the rear would be against the buffers so the train wouldn't run away. To get the brakes back on, the shunter would couple the locomotive - a class 47 or 45 - to the train and do a brake test. More often than not the brake test would be left to the guard. By pumping the brakes and releasing them, vacuum pressure would be restored and make the train safe.

One early morning, the shunter and spare driver put the engine on the 8.20am Nottingham London, but it was freezing cold so they left it to the day driver and guard. Except they assumed the night shift had done the preparations and brake test. The driver accidently left the engine brakes on air brake, which meant the train left Nottingham with 9 effectively loose coupled carriages. Everything was alright until they got a yellow at Beeston and a red at Attenborough because a freight train was fouling the main line at Trent junctions. The driver eased on the brakes, but without the braking power of nine coaches, and nine 30 odd ton coaches pushing it, the train was unable to stop at the red signal at Attenborough. Fortunately there was nothing on the crossing when the train ran through the barriers at Attenborough Station.

Two drivers, one shunter, a guard and a sidings forman received form ones later that week.

​Doing a brake continuity test is an absolute necessity when preparing a train for the main line.

[Merthyr Imp 729]

Here's a 'Peak' at Nottingham - 45046 'Royal Fusilier'. Not sure what that is coupled behind it.

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

It looks like a mobile mess room on an engineer's train.

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

Oh. I forgot to mention. I have coupled that engine (45046) to a passenger train numerous times in the 1980s. The ETH (Electric Train Heating) cables and sockets weren't so accessible on class 45s and 46s as they were on class 47s.

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

When they did away with shunters at Leicester London Road, there was no one to uncouple the engine on the Peterborough Carlisle TPO. It came in facing south around mid-night. A shunter then had to uncouple the class 47, tell the signalman it was ready to 'run round' and then go to the other end to wait to couple up again so that it could return up the MML and go to Derby. So we had a job riding on a light engine sent to Leicester for some obscure working. We then had to wait in the mess room for an hour then do the business with the 'run round'. After the postmen had finished loading and unloading, the train was 'Right Away' next stop Derby.

Although discouraged we used to ride in the front cab with the driver (instead of riding in the back cab). It was really scary on foggy nights doing 90 MPH through thick fog. This was possible with automatic signalling and AWS. And there were at least two drivers who broke the speed limit around Sheet Stores curve. One used to say " we're not drinking tea! They're not drinking tea" referring to the postmen sorting mail on the TPO. Not a nice man.

[ChrisB 150]

In my time on the railway, I remember a couple of regular trains, about twenty years ago, which the public wouldn't know about;

Manchester to St. Pancras parcels, every night via Derby.

Empty newspaper vans, ever afternoon from Derby to London, return with the next day's papers at night.

The trains don't run now and the parcel depots have gone too.

The public know about all the extra juggernauts roaring up and down the motorway now though!

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

I remember the Manchester St Pancras parcels. I think the reporting number was 1M25. It also had passenger coaches full of 'Dead bodies' with huge Zs coming out of them.

The Derby newspaper train came in about 2am onto platform 1. It was our job to uncouple the engine and bell it out to 4 shed. We would the couple the shunt engine (class 08) and wait for the couriers to finish unloading the papers. One night I got bored and went exploring the cellars under the station and nearly got lost.

After the train had been unloaded it was shunted into the West End Dock. The afternoon turn would fetch them out onto the station yard where the engine would be coupled and after a brake test, it would be right away St Pancras.

For a short while, Derby Etches Park had the job servicing and cleaning all the paper trains. This would result in a procession of van trains dumped in the station yard for us to fetch to the sidings. After cleaning and examination, we would shunt them into the correct formations and then return some to the Station yard from where an engine would collect. Others would be fetched straight from the sidings. Very busy days but real railway work. Gone forever.

[MELTONSTILTON 452]

I used to like the old paper trains, and have fond memories of them from when I was living in London in the 1970's, I used to catch a late train home to Nottingham around 11pm, and mostly, it was a paper train that had a couple of old corridor passenger coaches attached, You would walk along Saint Pancras platform and they would be loading the papers, it was a slow train stopping at almost every station, but you had one perk, before the train left the station paper reps, would walk through the train handing out free papers, at times you had almost all the daily's free.

[Donnyred 1]

I used to like the old paper trains, and have fond memories of them from when I was living in London in the 1970's, I used to catch a late train home to Nottingham around 11pm, and mostly, it was a paper train that had a couple of old corridor passenger coaches attached, You would walk along Saint Pancras platform and they would be loading the papers, it was a slow train stopping at almost every station, but you had one perk, before the train left the station paper reps, would walk through the train handing out free papers, at times you had almost all the daily's free.

When I was a guard at Nottingham in the late 70's early 80's I worked the Saturday passenger train up to London and the newspaper guys were sitting in the coaches sorting all the labels out for the return trip. I worked the newspaper train back on the Saturday night arriving in Nottingham on Sunday morning. The train reversed into London Road low level where all the distributer were waiting to offload. I took some of the Sunday papers home which were spare but realised later that all the supplements came up on a Wednesday. happy memories.

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

Donny red. I was there until 1985 when I transferred to Derby so I probably bumped into you. Some of the guys acquired so many free papers that they were doing paper rounds. Crafty gits. Unlike Derby, that train had non-railway personnel on board and returned to London immediately after unloading.

In the fifties and sixties, the paper train used to drop the vans off at Arkwright St station on the GC and continue with the carriages to Victoria. It would run round and the paper vans were shunted back on at the return journey. At Arkwright St. Station, the papers were sent down a helter skelter ramp device straight to the road vehicles waiting on the street below.

All this is railway work never to be seen again.

[Bubblewrap 3,815]

I was on the railway in the London area from mid 1967 till mid 1971.

And it always seemed "odd" that you could always get tomorrows papers after about 10 .30 pm