THE NORTH WALES COAST RAILWAY NOTICE BOARD

Rheilffordd Arfordir Gogledd Cymru Bwrdd hysbyseb



47 828 Severn Valley Railway leaving Crewe in an appalling storm on 4 August with the 08.40 London-Holyhead in tow. (Ian Bowland)
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Edition of 05 August 2004

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Bangor Monday lunchtime - with Alan Crawshaw



There's a lot going on in this photograph  of Bangor at Lunchtime on 2 August. 47 816 is at the head of 1D87 which is spilling passengers onto platform 2 while railfans gather to photograph the loco. The sidings are hosting a tamper and the Network Rail train with 31 106 Spalding Town nearest the camera and Railtrack liveried 31 190 Gryphon at the back. Coach numbers are 72630, 72631, 62482 and 99666. A 175 is  the 11:50 Holyhead to Crewe arriving at Platform 1. 1D87 from London was seven minutes late, behind the similarly delayed 10:00 Manchester to  Holyhead which was formed by a Ginsters liveried 158. The 12:15 Bangor to Llandudno Junction was cancelled; are the 175s playing up again?


'North Wales Pendolino tests a success'

Full marks to Virgin Trains for issuing the following press release on their website:

Virgin Trains has confirmed that its first ever haulage of a Pendolino along the North Wales Coast with a Class 57 locomotive was a success. Class 57 diesel locomotives will haul the state-of-the art tilting Pendolino trains on the key Holyhead-London business trains from September. Between Crewe and London the electric Pendolino will operate under its own power.

The tests on July 29th and 30th were to test the control systems between the locomotive and the Pendolino train. The test on July 29th highlighted a control system 'conflict' with one of the previous modifications carried out on the Pendolinos. This was validated by coupling the Class 57 to a different Pendolino train, which replicated the 'conflict'. The correction required to the previous modification is now being carried out on all Pendolino trains.

Following work overnight, the test train formed of Class 57 No. 57301 and Pendolino No. 390040 operated a return trip between Crewe and Llandudno Junction and return on  July 30th.

Head of Pendolino Delivery Ross Spicer said: "The two days of testing has been highly productive and we have been impressed with the performance of the Class 57-hauled Pendolino over the North Wales line. We will continue to analyse the data obtained and plan to repeat the run - but this time through to Holyhead - in early September."

One thing the press release doesn't mention is that one of our senior contributors was contacted recently to enquire where Virgin's photographers could get a good shot of the test run 29 July. The footbridge at Rhyl Marine Lake was suggested. When the day came, Virgin's photographers turned out to be 'big guns' working for the railway press. Virgin had put them up in a hotel in the previous night but, oh dear, the Pendolino didnt run .... Next day, the sun shone brightly at Marine Lake footbridge, and  locals pressed their shutters (see John Myers' pictures on the previous Notice Board), they almost spared a thought for the poor souls that had travelled to Wales the previous morning and had braved the bad weather for nowt ...  The 390s will not use their tilting gear along the Coast, but they will do a little extra up-and-down movement, if the way the track is apparently being lowered under some of the bridges is anything to go by.  - 5 July

Sounds of the Sixties



The engineering work on Sunday 1 August brought with it a couple of Class 60s on ballast trains: the type was once common on ballast trains from Penmaenmawr until Freightliner took over the contract, and now here they are again bringing the stuff back. Mark Lloyd Davies took our first sequence of pictures at Holyhead the previous evening as the two trains arrived. Above, the first train arrived at Holyead being Corus silver liveried 60 033 Tees Steel Express.



Having run round its train, 60 033 departs platform 1 to outer limits of station to allow arrival of the other train, which it set back into the carriage sidings.



EWS-liveried 60 004 arrives with the second load.



Mark's last view shows both trains in the fading Saturday evening light as 60 004.  Soon afterwards it shunted its train into platform 3.



Sunday dawned bright and sunny, giving John Lewis a good chance to make a photo survey of all the trains in and around Holyhead station on this day with passenger trains replaced by buses west of Rhyl. 60 004 was still in Platform 3, but the other ballast train had headed off to the work site.



175 006 Brondyffryn Trust was stabled under the road bridge.



47 816 and Virgin rake.



A Ginster's pastie...



... and 158 838 in its Arriva-ised Wales and Borders silver.



60 033 has transferred to Bangor station in the first of Rowan Crawshaw's pictures.



At the work site near Penmaenmawr, view fron the North Wales Coast cycleway (that chap in the shorts looks familiar!) a train of spoil wagons was top-n-tailed by 66 109 ...



... and 66 203. (Rowan Crawshaw)



And finally, a look at the work in progress. (Rowan Crawshaw)

Problems at Puffin Roundabout



North Wales Coast road traffic can have its own problems, as this image captured at 21:00 on 31 July from traffic camera 36 at Puffin Roundabout near Penmaenmawr reveals. Eastbound traffic was at a crawl following an accident some hours earlier. On the left, a Class 175 makes unencumbered progress with a Crewe-Holyhead service. - 5 August

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