THE NORTH WALES COAST RAILWAY NOTICE
BOARD
Rheilffordd Arfordir Gogledd Cymru Bwrdd
hysbyseb
47 847 Railway World Magazine / Brian Morrison on
the 17:41 Manchester to Chester on 26 January, photographed at
Warrington Bank Quay by Jeff Tattersall, who writes. 'I
think I
have just about recovered from choking on the smell of washing powder
...'
This site is dedicated to all our regular contributors and
supporters, and especially the rail staff of North Wales.
Edition of 30 January 2005
Class 47s to continue
The North Wales loco-hauled diagram has been given another extension up
to and including 26 February, running to the same times as recently on
the Manchester turn. However, we are reliably informed that it
will finally stop after that (but for how long?). The latest performer
has been 47 843 Vulcan: our picture above by 'Corrie'
shows it passing Valley on 28 January.
Your compiler skived off to Deansgate station on 28 January to attempt
a video of the morning train from Chester passing: following some
useful advice from Darryl Thomas I have converted this to
Microsoft 'wmv' format to see if people would prefer a smaller file: what do you think?
Darryl also sends along this picture taken at Crewe back in 1990
showing our favourite engine 47 847 in the original BR blue
colour scheme, embellished by a large 'westie terrier' symbol
presumably applied at Eastfield depot in Glasgow where it was allocated
in 1987-1988. It would seem that when carrying its previous number 47
577 it had previously been given an 'unauthorised' version of
large-logo blue by Scotrail, which had to be removed by order of
the British Rail 'powers-that-be' - if you look carefully you can
see a patch of different blue where the large double arrow must have
been. Compare with the pictures on the marvellous Class 47
website.
Investment? What
investment?
Here's a press release issued on 26 January by the Welsh Assembly
Government:
£50 million investment to relieve overcrowding on
Valley Line services
Andrew Davies, Minister for Economic Development and Transport, today
announced details of a major investment to enhance capacity and relieve
overcrowding on the [South Wales] Valley Line train network. This
additional investment, worth £50 million over the course of the
franchise, will allow the leasing of fourteen additional vehicles to be
used on weekday peak services, which will double the length of 15
trains every day. Fourteen pacer trains will also be replaced with
longer sprinter trains. This will create 1800 extra seats on weekday
peak time services.
Speaking at the annual conference of the Rail Passengers Committee
Wales, Andrew Davies said: "This investment will immediately enhance
capacity by some 20% on Valley Line services to alleviate overcrowding
which is currently experienced on some peak time services into
Cardiff. "We have made significant progress in delivering an
integrated transport agenda across Wales, and this announcement,
together with a range of specific measures to reduce congestion,
increase consumer choice and improve transport links throughout the
country, is essential to the continued development of our economy."
Peter Strachan, the Managing Director of Arriva Trains Wales said:"I
would like to thank Andrew Davies for this further major investment
from the Welsh Assembly Government. Arriva Trains Wales, working within
the funding provided for the franchise by the Strategic Rail Authority,
is seeking to improve services under the Standard Pattern Timetable
from December 2005.
"This will provide a regular, clockface timetable, a number of improved
services, and improved connections between services, including First
Great Western services from Paddington and Virgin Trains in North
Wales. The additional investment by the Welsh Assembly Government,
which is further partnership working between us, allows us to deliver
significant extra Valleys capacity to relieve peak overcrowding on
weekday services and for weekend working across other parts of the
network.
"This will include extra capacity on trains for West Wales;
Wrexham-Bidston, the Heart of Wales line, Conwy Valley, the Llandudno
to Manchester service and both the Cambrian mainline and Cambrian coast
line. I am sure this will be widely welcomed across Wales. The rolling
stock will also be available for special events such as Millennium
Stadium events and sporting fixtures. The programme of capital
investment across South East Wales is also great news and will enable
further improvement of services."
So what do we make of this? Amid the usual verbiage, it's very hard to
work out what is actually going to happen. We already know that part of
the deal for Arriva's takeover of the franchise was 'Introduction of
seven class 150 Diesel Multiple Units [that is to say fourteen
vehicles] planned from December 2004, leading to greater operational
flexibility and resilience, to replace current, less suitable
stock.' These 2-car 150s, replaced at Scotrail by new class 170s,
have indeed started to make their way slowly south - 150 262
was
reported heading for Cardiff back in November and 150 283 was
noted on
a Hereford - Manchester Piccadilly service on Sunday 23 January,
for example. Our understanding was that these 150s were mainly intended
to see off the 37-hauled trains on the Rhymney line. Are the '14
vehicles' in the above press release the same ones, or another
fourteen? And these 'Fourteen pacer trains [that] will also be
replaced with
longer sprinter trains' - does this mean a further 14 units (or even
fourteen vehicles maybe - there's a suspicious number of sevens and
fourteens in all this) on top of the original 14 plus the 14 from the
previous sentence? And who gets lumbered with the Pacers?
And will we end up with 142s on weekend Manchester - Llandudno trains?
And if ATW crews lose their knowledge of 37s, how can this possibly be
an advantage for 'special events'? And - especially - in what
sense can hiring a few 20-year old trains (that nobody else wants) from
a leasing company be described as an 'investment'? We'd be very
pleased to hear from anyone who knows what is actually happening.
Thanks as always to George Jones for help with this item.
- 30 January
Exhibition of Railway
Paintings in Shrewsbury
The work of artists
John Austin GRA, Ron Deelow and Alan Dart will be on display at :
The Gallery, The English Bridge Workshop Abbey Foregate Shrewsbury from
1 February to 19 February 2005. Fourteen works are being exhibited by
John Austin, including scenes in Wales, on the Severn Valley Railway,
at Shrewsbury and in the West Country. Ron Dellows has 10 works and
Alan Dart 7 works on display. Originals of the paintings are available
for sale.
The Gallery is open from 10:00 to 16:30 Monday-Saturdays. In addition
John Austin will give an illustrated talk on Friday, 11 Feb at 19:30.
The exhibition is being supported by Arriva Trains Wales and the
Shropshire Railway Heritage Trust. Further details from : 01743
243283. - 30 January
Before Daisy, and after
Most of us are familiar with "Daisy", the green class 101 DMU, but we
wonder how many 'page 27ers' remember this one on the coast line? In Larry
Goddard's picture, green Class 108 climbs to Llandulas with the
17:28 Crewe-Holyhead on 30 June 1988. It had also worked the 11.52
Chester-Bangor earlier in the day.
This unit, 53964 and 53247, had been repainted in
this 'heritage' livery in 1986 and was initially used on the Cumbrian
Coast and Settle-Carlisle lines, and became familiar to many when it
was used on the revived S & C stopping service after that line was
reprieved : in the picture one can spot the bars across the door
droplight windows which had to be fitted to any units using the
Cumbrian Coast line with its narrow tunnels. White 'speed-whiskers'
were painted on the yellow ends, but could hardly be seen.
As for its heritage cousin 101 685 'Daisy', sources tell us
that like all the rest of the final First North Western fleet which
were
towed away a year ago to the defence establishment at Shoeburyness in
Essex for storage, it has now been sold on by Angel Trains to a
preservationist, possibly to be re-united with its centre car which was
moved from Blackpool carriage sidings some months ago. Some of the
units have found homes at well-known preservation sites: for example 101 680 at the North York
Moors line, 101 692
at the Midland Railway Centre, 101 678 on the Wensleydale Railway
(which also has some ex-North Wales Coast Mk2a coaches), 101 693
said to be on its way to the East Lancashire .... but what of 101
685 whose fate seems to be something of a mystery? Does
anyone have any information? - 30 January
Timber traffic on the
Cambrian line
A lot of messages have reaches us lately regarding the planned trial of
timber traffic between Aberystwyth and the Kronospan factory at Chirk.
To quote from the local press, in typical confused mode suggesting that
trains have rather more capacity than might be expected:
'Freight trains will be used in a six-week trial to carry
millions of tonnes of wood from Aberystwyth to the Chirk-based
chipboard factory Kronospan Ltd, from February 7. The exercise will
check the feasibility of transporting timber by rail in Wales in the
hope of introducing a permanent freight multiple unit that can compete
with road haulage. If successful, the scheme will see some 16 million
tonne kilometres - the formula used for measuring the transportation of
one tonne of goods over one kilometre - of timber traffic per year
removed from Welsh roads. The amount is equivalent to 4,000 lorries '
The idea of 'freight multiple units' has been around for a few years
now, with various trials having been conducted using Railtrack /
Network Rail 'MPV' multi-purpose vehicles that are used for
weed-killing and similar duties. The train will consist (as we
understand it) of four standard 4-wheeled OTA timber wagons as used on
other services to Chirk, 'topped and tailed' by the MPVs which are
single-ended. If the Shropshire Star is to be believed, the
timber is to be brought in by sea to Aberystwyth harbour. Our
picture above showing a pair of MPVs, DR98922 and DR98972
at Eastleigh in 2003, was kindly supplied my Mike Cubberley
from his very interesting fotopic website and shows how
these machines do have a load-carrying area of their own.
Crew training runs have been taking place in recent times (using 37
418 East Lancashire Railway we believe) and a 'dry run'
using MPVs ran in the early hours of 19 January. Can anyone explain why
it would not be just as simple to use a 37 to work the trains - it
would seem to have rather more chance of getting up the 1 in 52
gradient to Talerddig summit.
Special thanks to Stephen Roberts and Steve Jones for
assistance with this report. - 30 January
A day trip south of
London, 21 January - with Dave Bramley
The train down was 1R19, the early morning Holyhead - London, with
newly-converted Class 57, 57 316 FAB 1 at the head - a
nice start to the day, for an uneventful trip to London on 390 037
Virgin Buccaneer. The picture was taken at Crewe, just as they
were taking the 57 off this train - this and its return working are
rarely-photographed service so far in their career, due to always
running along the Coast in the dark.
I then spent the next few hours drifting back and forth between various
station between Waterloo and Basingstoke on the remaining slam door
stock, also trying out the latest offerings from Siemens (classes 444
and 450) and Bombardier (class 377). It has to said the Bombardier
built units are superb, whilst the Siemens units tend to bounce and
wobble like the 175's do.
Old 4-VEP unit 3417, seen here, has been done up in its
original 1960s rail blue with metal BR arrows to commemorate the last
days of the 'slammers.'
I then headed up to Reading for a trip into Paddington, whist there I
managed to see one of each subclass of class 59 in ten minutes!
Impressed. The next train to Paddington rolled in and it was an Alstom
class 180 ..... now do I do it ? I suppose they can't be as bad as 175
can they? No they are not, they are better, my word do they shift! The
black smoke out of the exhaust and the charge for the coffee was
shocking though - £1.70 ....
Then back to Euston where the next available to Crewe was the 17:19
Liverpool. I always catch the first available, as you never know with
Pendolinos ... This did well until Tamworth when we slowed,
probably due to weather, and arrived into Crewe 10 minutes late. And
what a mess at Crewe!
As we pulled in at 19:35, so did the 17:34 to Euston. By 20:00 there
was now a Pendolino dumped empty in platform 11, a Carlisle Pendolino
on 6, a Manchester Voyager behind it on 6 (above) ...
... 1D25 London - Holyhead in Platform 12 waiting for an engine
(picture above), a Manchester Pendolino on 5, a Liverpool Pendolino on
1 and two stood outside! I made a hasty get away on the 20:17
Crewe - Holyhead worked by 175 003 and left them to it, but
I've never seen Crewe in such a mess before, caused by flooding at
Hartford and a lightning strike I believe. - 30 January
Post Mortem
Let's go back, with the help of our correspondents, over the
unfortunate events of Saturday 15 December when train 1D37, the
10:06 Manchester - Holyhead, arrived at Chester over three hours
late. The story reveals some of the problems of working today's
rationalised railway.
The locomotive, 47 805, was short of power and originally
came to a stand at Astley signalbox just a few miles out of Manchester
on the Chat Moss line. 1D38 10:17 Manchester - Llandudno stood at the
signal behind if for 25 minutes. However, the driver got 805 going
again and it limped on to Warrington Bank Quay with the Llandudno train
being checked behind it again at Newton-le-Willows and Earlestown. At
Winwick Junction, the latter train was put on the fast line, enabling
it to arrive in an adjacent platform at Warrington station, enabling
the passengers from the ailing train to transfer and get on their way.
Unfortunately, this is not what happened: our reporters differ on the
reasons why, but while passengers were still being allowed to board the
faulty train, and nobody had been advised to transfer, the Llandudno
service, which was (not surprisingly) almost empty, was dispatched by
the platform staff and went on ahead.
47 805 then departed, only to immediately run short of power again; the
train limped through Acton Grange Junction (the last place from where a
simple rescue would have been possible) and onto the Chester line where
it eventually failed between Daresbury and Runcorn East. Unfortunately,
we believe the train had just passed some sprung catch points, so
recovery from the Warrington end was not feasible. Plans were made to
introduce single-line working around the failure, but in the end the
train was rescued before this could be introduced. 47 847 was
summoned from Crewe - it first being necessary to find a Class
47-trained driver of course - and had to run via Chester because the
direct route from Warrington to Crewe was closed for engineering work
that day.
The rescue loco was observed arriving from Crewe at 13:43 which
probably means a departure around 12:50; the train was declared a
failure at roughly 12:00, so it took them just 50 minutes to get
a route trained crew and engine ready which probably isn't too bad
under the circumstances. While all this was going one, at least
one of the Manchester - Llandudno trains reached Chester by running
non-stop to Crewe and reversing: what was probably the 12:16 from
Manchester Manchester - Llandudno was noticed at Crewe, reversing in
Platform 6 and announced as 'not for Public
use.' Virgin Trains were also having troubles that day:
Platform 5 at Crewe was occupied by over an hour by a London - Preston
'Pendolino' after 57 314 Firefly refused to
communicate with the 390, and was replaced by 57 307 Lady
Penelope for the diverted journey north via Manchester to Preston.
Our picture (by Dave Skipsey) shows the empty train with its
rescue loco, having turned on the triangle of lines west of
Chester, departing Chester for Crewe at 14:40.
Regarding the suggestion that Arriva did not hire a rescue loco from
EWS at Warrington, to avoid the £2000 hire charge, we've been
told that this is only applicable if Network Rail have to organise the
rescue (there is a much lower hourly rate chargeable to Train Operating
Companies) and which Network Rail then pass onto the TOC as a way of
encouraging them to 'get their finger out' next time. Perversely, a bit
of good news relating to this sorry tale is that there were not many
people travelling on the Manchester - Chester via Warrington trains,
because (as noted in our 22 January
report) prospective passengers were being told by the railway's
information services that the service was not running. So one can only
hope that not too many people missed their boat or were otherwise
inconvenienced.
Many thanks to everyone who's helped with this report. - 30 January