Are there any regular loco-hauled passenger trains in the Nottm/Derby area


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Sorry, the title is a bit of a mouthfull, but talk of the Harwich Boat train on the Carrington thread made me wonder about this. When I left in 1976 all the mainline services were handled by 'Peaks' or Class 47's, the Boat Train by 37's and the summer services to Skegness had a variety of motive power. For this service a train of ancient maroon stock with peeling roofs was kept in the carriage sidings at London Road, I believe it was the last maroon stock operating on BR. To recall, these trains were operated by Class 20's running in pairs, they didn't have train heating facilities, but it was summer, so what! Another feature of those days were the regular weekend excursions run all over the country including 'Mystery Tours' to undisclosed destinations. I recall reading once that a couple on holiday in Tenby went off on a mystery trip from their resort and ended up back in Nottingham, they went home and checked to see if they'd turned off the gas! My old man was a great fan of these excursions and went everywhere, I went with him to Edinburgh, it took hours to get there, leaving Midland at 6:00am and getting back in the early hours of Sunday morning.

I'm assuming that mainline hauled trains all ceased when the HST's were brought in from the ECML in the late 80's, but what about other loco hauled passenger trains, do any still run, or more probably, what were the last services and when did they finish.

In our region, the Class 37 hauled Norwich expresses ceased in the late 80's with full electrification, replaced at first by E3000 type electric locos from the WCML then Class 90's equiped with driving van trailers, the locos always face London. There is still a regular diesel hauled service however, some of the London to Norwich expresses are coupled up to a venerable Class 47 and dragged onwards to Great Yarmouth. In the summer they operate a push-pull service from Norwich to Yarmouth with four Mk3 coaches sandwiched between a couple of class 47's, talk about an excessive use of motive power, I don't know why they do this as the old Yarmouth Vauxhall station is still fully equiped with a fully manned ancient GER signal box, head shunts at the terminus and a fantastic collection of semiphore signals. Whenever I've gone past Norwich Crown Point sheds, it always seems full of diesels of one type or another, the last time I went past, last year, it even had a 'Black 5' 4-6-0 simmering away in the station yards.

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I don't believe there are any in the Nottingham/Derby area any more.

There are of course still the electric class 91s on the East Coast main line, and as you say, there are the electrically-hauled trains out of Liverpool Street to Norwich, etc, but without checking I think the only other locomotive haulage is on the Chiltern Railways services out of Marylebone to Birmingham Moor Street, and some of Arriva Trains Wales services between North and South Wales via Shrewsbury and Hereford.

Both of the above being operated by class 67s.

A year or two ago First Great Western were using class 57s or 67s on summer services to Paignton and Taunton from Cardiff, but I'm not sure if they still do,

There are also still sleeper services of course. I think First Great Western still use class 57s on theirs.

You could count HSTs as an engine at each end!

But after the introduction of the HSTs, what did for a lot of locomotive haulage was the influx of Sprinters, starting with class 150/2s on the Trans-Pennine services, and then even more so with 156s (e.g. Birmingham - Norwich) and the 158s. Then of course we had the Voyagers eliminating locomotives on the Cross-Country services (e.g. Newcastle - Plymouth, etc, etc)

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As far as I'm aware there are absolutely no loco hauled passenger trains in the Nottingham/Derby area. Skegness is now just 153/156s - sometimes in multiple, sometimes not. The nearest you get is the few Cross-Country trains that are HST instead of Voyager - and how peaceful it is to sit in a coach that doesn't have a diesel engine thumping away under it for hour after hour.

Regarding Merthyr Imp's comments above, the Paignton-Cardiff services were turned over to DMUs a while ago - 150s - I ask you! Yes, I think Chiltern are still using their 67 hauled Mark IIIs on selected and identified services. I'm not too sure about the Arriva Wales Holyhead-Cardiff service - which certainly used to be 67 hauled, but I notice the first class and restaurant service is no longer advertised on the National Rail website, so it may have relapsed into a 158 or 175.

I did find a reference on Flickr to a one-off Sunday last September, when the Crewe- Derby service was operated with three Mark II's sandwiched between two 37s. (Sorry "Paste" doesn't seem to be working for me on here any more. Look for a contributor called "Renown" - or Martyn Hearson, and scroll down until you find the picture at Kidsgrove).

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If you would like a really pleasant and enjoyable ride on a scheduled loco hauled service, I would recommend this:

Make your way down to London on any Saturday and return by taking the Chiltern Railways service to Birmingham.

It leaves Marylebone at 18.06 and is lightly loaded on Saturdays, no commuters. The Mk.3 carriages have been very nicely refurbished and there's a buffet car also. The quiet coach is usually the one behind the engine. It arrives in Birmingham just before 8pm, plenty of time to get back to Nottingham.

It's a fast ride too, up through Bicester, Banbury and Leamington Spa. very nice scenery up through the Chiltern Hills.

And incredibly, there's a café opposite Marylebone Station where you can get a cup of tea to take away for 70p!

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I've been Googling and got the current list for the entire country from the TOCs timetable, it makes sad reading:-

Arriva Holyhead-Cardiff Class 67

GW Riviera Sleeper Class 56/7

Caledonian Sleeper Class 90 then 67

Chiltern Railways Class 67

Virgin Euston-Wembley/Euston-New Street Class 90

Anglia Norwich-L'pool St Class 90

Anglia Norwich-Yarmouth 2x Class 47 plus 4 Mk3 between

Anglia Norwich-Lowestoft 2x Class 47 plus 4 Mk3

Oddly the list doesn't mention ECML Class 91's, do they count as EMU's then.

I'm pleased to note that good old East Anglia, or rather Norwich, seems to have more of it's share of loco hauled services.

I note the use of Class 90's on the sleepers and Virgin trains, they must have to be turned somewhere otherwise they'd have to run flat end forwards, I have seen that on a Norwich train through Witham due to the DVT having a problem at Liverpool St, that must have been fun trying to sort out as there are no longer 'station pilots' at Liverpool St and Stratford sheds have been long flattened, the nearest diesel shunter must be at Ilford EMU depot which is miles away.

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Surely the 90s are double-ended? They were certainly built that way. Only the 91s were built with a flat inside end, for the ECML.

Yep, you're right, I must have seen possibly a trial with a Class 91 as it was definately flat front first, they still use DVT's with them though to stop having to switch ends at both termini I presume, I've never travelled on one, I wouldn't like to be pushed at the speeds they travel at, they wiz through Witham so fast I never have the chance to study them. My favourite spot to watch the very occasional steam special we get in these parts is an unmanned level crossing near Kelvedon. I was looking down the line towards Witham one day waiting for Tornado when one of these things came up behind me, you couldn't hear it coming and it must have been doing a ton, frightened the life out of me. Some bloke got his mobility scooter struck by one of these things on the same crossing last year, quite frankly it appeared he was sneaking round the barrier and as the track is dead straight in both directions, he clearly hadn't been to Specsavers. The scooter was caught a glancing blow at 100mph and he got away without injury. Tornado and vintage train, incidentally, was being pulled along by a Class 37 that day because of 'the fire risk', I was not impressed.
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Definitely none. I was privileged to be involved in shunting the last Cross country regular loco-hauled trains at Derby before they became HSTs. We had to service them and shunt the coaches around, also connect the engines at Derby station. Most of the loco hauled sets transferred to Longsight and Polmadie depots.

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0753 Derby to Skegness and return journey 1140 Skegness to Derby are hst units this summer on Saturadys only till September,calling at Nottingham and only a handful of stops on the way to and from Skegness.

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There's also a regular Summer Saturday class 47 loco hauled train from Norwich to Great Yarmouth and return twice a day.

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Think about it, HST's are now 40 years old, about the same age as the Royal Scots we were spotting in the 60's, the Jubilees were even younger as were the Black 5's, the Britannia's only just over 10 years old at the time. Diesels weren't built to last that long, these clearly have done, whatever they're used for, what can possibly replace them.

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I remember seeing HST's when they were pretty new, at Reading station when I was in the Army. There was, I think, some issue with the original brake pads as they used to stink terribly. I recall a conversation many years ago with a good friend of mine on GCR, where we were discussing railway preservation in the future, and envisaged the two of us, on Zimmer frames, looking nostalgically at a rake of Mark 3 coaches and saying to each other, "Yes, I remember the High Speed Train"; the way they're going, I'll be on that Zimmer before the damn things get withdrawn!

Whilst I agree that diesels probably weren't designed to last that long, there's no doubt that many have confounded the original cynics; Class 20's and 37's in particular seem to have remarkable longevity. the 08 class shunters were perhaps expected to soldier on a bit longer given the nature of their normal duties, but it's interesting that there's been no rush to replace them.

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The HST's have been re-engined and have done many more miles than the steam locos we used to delight in. Diesels have proved to be more durable than we steam enthusiasts expected.

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Certain ones have Brian. Most were rubbish, especially the Western Region ones. 20's, 31's, 37's and 47's were the best.

Then the 26/7's, 33's, 40's and 45's and the 50's The rest were crap. A complete waste of money. Especially as some of the Standard steam loco's were barely ten years old.

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I remember seeing HST's when they were pretty new, at Reading station when I was in the Army. There was, I think, some issue with the original brake pads as they used to stink terribly.

Yes, I think the trouble was said to be that the air intakes for the air conditioning were too close to where the brakes were. They did solve the problem in time, but I don't know the details.

Another problem they seemed to suffer in earlier days (1970s/80s) was that you'd often find one of the power cars was out of action, but I can't remember the last time that happened to me - and this includes the days before the fairly recent fitting of new engines to them. Not that I travel as often as I used to.

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From my time shunting at Derby maintenance depot, I noticed that HSTs were a very complex piece of kit. Apart from the racket they caused at night even when just ticking over, there was always some small or large repair being done. Given the mileage they did even after all the re-engines, I think they have been good value. Remember, these trains were built just after we were emerging from steam days when everything was still more or less mechanical. The technology which went into them was quite ahead of its time and to see them still running all these years later when everything else is so high-tech is nothing short of a miracle.

They were never really designed to shunt about swapping coaches etc which is why all the vehicles were built with fixed buck-eye couplings instead of the drop head buck-eye couplings found on loco-hauled coaches. This meant that to loco haul HST coaches a barrier wagon with a drop-head buck-eye coupling had to be used so that a loco screw coupling could be thrown over the draw hook on one end of the barrier wagon. There was also fun and games coupling a locomotive to the front of an HST. In the luggage compartment was found a long and also a short emergency coupling. The very heavy coupling was deployed being attached to an extending bar behind the liftable front panel of the power car. It was then attached to the draw hook on the locomotive, usually a class 47. The extending part was then pushed back and a securing pin inserted. Air brake pipes were connected and then the driver had to pratt about with air cocks in the engine room (I never did understand this process, but it was nothing to do with mere shunting staff). Once the brakes released, it was right away. Thank goodness all the Virgin Trains HSTs had a proper draw hook fitted on the nose of all their power cars. Made things a lot easier, especially when doing the job at the station when the train was probably already running late. Funny thing though. We always had to do all this pratting about when it was raining heavily. No wonder we were always covered in oil and grease.

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Have fond memories of the old Jolly Fisherman runs to Skegness when I was a youngster going on holiday to Skegness. If I remember correctly used to be a pair or sometimes three class 20s that pulled the train to Skegness. I think I heard the loco hauled services to Skegness were stopped because the station lost the facilities for the locomotives to be able to run around the set and so would have had to have done the return journey in reverse.

Recently caught the HST service to Skegness and whilst a vast improvement on usual sprinter unit allocated to the line the eight carriage HST was completely full by the time left Nottingham and made for an interesting journey to Skegness with screaming and hyperactive children making up the majority of the passengers.

There has always been problems with train unit allocation on the Skegness line with anything from a class 150 to a rare class 158 being allocated and on really bad days a single class 153 unit. With the popularity of the HST service maybe East Midlands Trains could run a hourly service to Skegness in the summer using a couple of Meridian units, this would certainly ease problems of overcrowding on the sprinter units as well as providing a more comfortable journey experience with the possibility of onboard catering facilities.

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