Just a few days in FNW service and 175 109 already looks a little battered when seen working the 08:18 Manchester - Llandudno at Manchester Oxford Road on 5 April. Picture Charlie Hulme

Regular Contributors: Dave Sallery , Alan Crawshaw, Rowan Crawshaw, Dave Skipsey, John Lewis, Tony Flusk,  John Dawson , Derick Norman, Tony Miles, Ian Bowland, Tim Rogers, Ivor Bufton, Alastair Graham, Mike Stone, Chris Pelling, Tim Proudman, 'Concrete Bob'  and Steve Vaughan.

LAST UPDATE:  03 April 2001

To the North Wales Coast main page : To The previous Noticeboard

[If you overslept and missed our 'hilarious' 1 April spoof page - click here for a reprise]

Here's an unusual sight pictured by Mike Dunning at Chester on 4 April: a Class 08 which is unusual here in itself, and still in BR blue livery with the Stratford depot 'cockney sparrow' sticker. What was it doing there?  - 5 April

The Coast, and especially the Conway Valley, looks like the place to be for railfans over the May Day bank hoilday, 5-7 May, providing the Foot and Mouth situation doesn;t stop everything. First North Western have promised to run the Conwy Vally branch service with a Class 101, hopefully the green one, on the normal service timetable Saturday and Monday, and also run a special service on the Sunday to the following diagram:

10.00 Ctr - Llandudno , 11.15 Llandudno - Blaenau Ffestiniog, 12.50 Blaenau Ffestiniog - Llandudno, 14.05 Llandudno - Blaenau, 15.20 Blaenau - Llandudno, 16.55 Llandudno - Chester.

I hope to get some confirmation soon from FNW that this service will run.

On Saturday 5 May, a Green Express Railtours diesel loco-hauled special, The Snowdonian, runs from: Hull, Brough, Gilberdyke, Selby Wakefield & Huddersfield to Blaenau Ffestiniog, and all three days the Llandudno Transport Festival will be under way in Llandudno and the Ffestiniog Railway will be running an 'anything goes' servive with a wide variety of locos. - 5 April

Crewe 3 April - by Ian Bowland

47 843 Vulcan arrived on time with the 9.19 Holyhead-London.  I waited at the North end of the station to see the AC electric buffer up to the rear but nothing appeared!  While the train was in platform 11 the 10.55 HST London-Holyhead arrived in platform 12 running 45 minutes late.  I couldn't wait to photograph it because the failure of the electric to appear meant that the 47 was going forward with the train and this time I wanted to see it happen.

Sure enough 47 843 took the train South from Crewe - we still don't know how far it goes!

A Class 37  in platform 6 again!  Sorry no passenger operation, it was the Middlewich-Arpley Enterprise avoiding the centre road - ah well we live in hope.

175 112 and 175 009 at Crewe, 3 April. Could 112 be showing signs of actually entering service? - 3 April

Many thanks to DJ Crawford, who writes: 'The named class 37s that were repainted in triple grey livery at BRML Springburn during light overhaul retained red backed nameplates. The exception was 37413Loch Eil Outward Bound which changed from red to black. Another quirk was that on 37 403/11/13/25 the nameplates were left in their original positions, next to the large radiator grille. In the official livery spec. the sub-sector graphic should have been at that end.

'Those named 37s (with overhaul date and Railfreight sub-sector) were:

37 403 Glendarroch (Jun-89, Distribution)
37 411 The Institution of Railway Signal Engineers (Oct-89, Construction)
37 425 Robert McAlpine/Concrete Bob (Dec-89, Construction)
37 413 Loch Eil Outward Bound (Jun-90, Distribution)
37 429 Eisteddfod Genedlaethol (Jan-91, Construction)
37 418 An Comunn Gaidhealach (Feb-91, Petroleum) - very quickly renamed Pectinidae
37 427 Bont Y Bermo (Mar-91, Construction)

37 428 David Lloyd George (May-91, Petroleum) was overhauled at BRML Doncaster, so got the black paint. The two construction 37s that were given new names, 37 684 Peak National Park, and 37 688 Great Rocks both had black nameplates.'

Fascinating stuff  - was it the great W.A. Tuplin who wrote despairingly about the fact that British railfans are more interested in the colours locos are painted than the details of how they work? Anyway, does anyone have a picture of 429 in Railfreight Construction colours? The second mystery remains - did all the RR-liveried locos have dark grey background when first repainted, or did some go straight to blue? - 3 April

Friday 30 March: 1D87/A70/D89: 43 158/093 1D90: 43 196/121
Saturday 31 March: 1A01/D87/A63: 43 196/121 1A13: 43 158/093 1D88:43 156/098
Sunday 1 April: 1D87/1A75: 43 158/093 1A61/1D89: 43 098/156
Monday 2 April: 1A23: 43 098/156

The current Virgin temporary timetable expires on 6 April, so we will have to see what next week brings. - 3 April

After a long pause with no new sets entering traffic, it is reported that 175 109 is now in service (picture someone please!) and 175 112 was seen at Crewe on 3 April (heading picture) so must be near acceptance. If any Alstom insiders are reading this (it has been known!) could they tell us whether the whole order up to 175 116 has now been completed by the Alstom works? - 3 April

On Tuesday 19 June, preserved paddle steamer PS Waverley is making its first cruise along the North Wales coast since 1980, from the Mersey Ferry landing stage in Liverpool to Llandudno and Holyhead, sailing at 10.30, due back 21.00.

Don’t miss Waverley’s triumphant return to the Mersey to celebrate the 180th Anniversary of St George Steam Packet Company’s sailings from Liverpool to North Wales. Steam up the Mersey & enjoy a visit to the seaside with time ashore at Llandudno £19.95 Sen Cits £17.95. Or stay aboard for a magnificent day cruise round the Northern Coast of Anglesey to Holyhead – Great Ormes Head & Puffin Island – spectacular scenery! £25.95. Sen Cits £23.95.

See the Waverley website for more details. - 3 April

The First North Western real-time train running site  has now regained a link from the First North Western Website from which it had been banished due to supposed inaccuracy, although as users of our train running page will know the actual server has carried on and has remained a useful guide. What has been done to restore its credibilty we don't know - any comments welcome. Thanks to John Oates for drawing this to our attention.

If we may be permitted an editorial comment, the news pages of the FNW website  seem to suffer badly from lack of currency of information, unless it's getting stuck  in a cacheing system somewhere. Middlewood station was closed for about one day due to the Foot and Mouth debacle (as a sign on the door of the Setter Dog Inn in Walkerbarn calls it), but the note on the FNW website saying it was closed was not updated for weeks, and a signal failure at Cheadle Hulme causing trains to be diverted via Styal was still shown several days after it had been fixed. No dates are attached to the entries, either, which is very confusing. It also appears that FNW are loath to submit information to the National Rail train running site, so what can be done? - 3 April

Mary gets a new coat - by Simon Lazenby

As predicted, former Coast   favourite 37 401 has been painted in Royal Scotsman livery. The picture above shows it  at Cottingham on 25 March, having arrived on 7T59 ballast from Doncaster. You can find the details of its wanderings on the Class 37/4 Project (http://www.class37project.co.uk) website. Also a full set of its Royal Scotsman schedules will be appearing there shortly.

Remarkably, its celebrity predecessor 37 428 appeared (below) at Cottingham on March 18. Two Royal Scotsman liveried 37s in a week at somewhere that gets no loco hauled trains is unbelievable.

Talking of 37 428 - it and 37 412 Driver John Elliott worked a Cardiff Tidal to Scunthorpe loaded steel train with 19 BDAs on Friday night 30 March, which I am led to believe included an assault on the Lickey Incline. They returned with the empties as far as Washwood Heath and continued light engine.

[For many locomotive pictures and other items, visit Simon's Platform 1 website.] - 2 April

Not a lot has changed at Chester in 35 years, the main change being removal of the footbridge, removal of the Up through line and replacement of the Mark 1's.  D1824 stands in Chester General on a London service during November of 1965.  Does anybody know what became of D1824? - 2 April

47 807 The Lion of Vienna stands at Chester on 31 March with the 09:19 Holyhead - London. 47 705 was on Thunderbird duty at Chester, but reporter Rowan Crawshaw was not amused to have to suffer a Class 150 later in the day on the 16:19 Crewe - Holyhead. - 2 April

 'Blackpool Rock' writes to tell us of two Website he runs devoted to the 47s: 'The Class 47 list' and 'Cross Country 47s' - full of useful info now that Class 47s are the focus of many railfans' attention, being almost the last traditional diesel locos that still work passenger trains. - 2 March

Referring to our recent comments about changes on First North Western, Mike Stone comments: 'It sounds unlikely the Manchester-Birmingham service will be Chester crews. I would have thought
the reason for taking Manchester drivers off the Coast line was to simplify the split between the Welsh franchise and North West local.

'As for Crewe depot closing, I am surprised it has lasted this long - presumably Toton will have spare capacity when Virgin Trains goes all-DMU. I was amazed the traincrew depot did not close when Warrington RMT opened.' - 2 April

David Walters writes: 'In your article about models, it says that Bangor station is crying out to be modelled. I am pretty sure a very good friend of mine, the late Eric Lynn from Bangor in fact did construct a model of Bangor, also Amlwch and Gaerwen Junc.The whole layout was in his attic and I had the privilege to operate - under supervision! Eric was a former driver at Bangor and had a vast collection of model engines and rolling stock. He did feature in a TV programme about his layout many years ago. Sadly he died at the end of October 2000. However he had started breaking up the layout some time ago to pass onto his son for rebuilding at his son's home. Additionally Eric had also built working models of Burrell (Ithink) traction engine and had started building a model Fowler tank engine. Some time ago he had approached myself and others to assist him to build a 1/4 scale Fowler Traction engine. Sadly his eyesight was failing, and the project never got beyond the planning stage.'

Anyone else remember Mr Lynn or the TV programme? - 2 April

Our picture of 37 425 Concrete Bob in Railfreight Construction livery with red nameplates generated an interesting reply from our good friend Peter Cresswell of the excellent Dark Peak Freight website, who encloses the above picture of the same effect on 37 411 The Institution of Railway Signal Engineers seen on the now-abandoned fuelling point at Buxton station. Quite a rare picture, as 411 only carried these plates from its naming at Fort William in May 1987 until October 1990, and was transferred to Tinsley depot for use from Buxton in Feburary 1989. We remain certain, though that the official colour for plates on this livery was black (with red background to the Shell logo on those with shell names.) Was this red background a semi-official mark of the Construction sub-sector?

Regarding the Regional Railways liveried locos, a similar mystery exists: the official nameplate background for this livery when first devised was 'Executive Dark Grey' to match the cab window frame and roof as shown above on 37 429. However, it's clear that some locos which were overhauled, certainly including 414 and 429, received Regional Railways blue backgrounds. I seems possible, however, that 422 had blue from its first appearance in RR livery. Comments on this, and about other RR-liveried locos, very welcome: get your magnifying glasses out ...

All Class 37/4s appeared from rebuilding in large-logo Rail Blue livery with red nameplate backgrounds where appropriate, and red backgrounds seem to have been continued into the 'InterCity/Mainline' era,
as show by 417 below - with a colourful surround of rust. EWS and Virgin liveried locos generally have black backgrounds to their plates.

Incidentally, a good reference work on this subject is the Shawplan Model Products nameplate catalogue,  - 2 April

Here's more about the forthcoming special from the Coast to The Settle and Carlisle line quoted by Ian Bowland from a newspaper item ('Dream Journey'): 'Rail passengers can travel back in time on a special train running from Abergele to Carlisle, through the Yorkshire Dales and over the famous Settle & Carlisle line. The train, 12 heritage coaches from the 1950's and 1960's, will call at  Abergele station at 7.15am on Saturday, May 19, and also Rhyl and Prestatyn before travelling the famous line that was saved from closure 11 years ago after a massive public campaign.  Tickets for the trip are £34 standard, £51 first class.  Further details are available from Green Express Railtours, 49 Byram Arcade, Westgate, Huddersfield, HD1 1ND Tel 01484 422920.'

This trip is wonderful value, in our opinion, and deserves your support. The traction will be a Class 47, presumably? - 2 April

We've been asked to give another mention to this, and are happy to oblige:

RECOLLECTIONS OF A STEAM ERA (1950-1966)  By the late Harry Rogers Jones. An album of 72 photographs (44 pages) including 33 in colour depicting an era in the Llandudno Junction area. The book contains a rare colour shot of GT3 Gas Turbine on test and early Derby Lightweight DMUs in black & white, along with gems of the old steam favourites. Research and text by Larry Davies. All profits from this book will be donated to the new St David's Hospice, Llandudno. Available from D.Rogers Jones, 33 Abergele Road, Colwyn Bay LL29 7RU By post £9.00. - 2 April

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Created by Charlie Hulme, Comments welcome to charlie@dweb.u-net.com