THE NORTH WALES COAST RAILWAY NOTICE
BOARD
Rheilffordd Arfordir Gogledd Cymru Bwrdd
hysbyseb
37 059 leading 20 305 with 12 July's eastbound
load of flasks having come off the Britannia Bridge single-line
section. (Alan Crawshaw)
.
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supporters, and especially the rail staff of North Wales.
Last update 14 July 2005
Firefly on the fly
57 314 Firefly was on the morning London - Holyhead on
11 July, with 390 003 Virgin Hero, and on time
too. Here it is running into Bangor (Alan Crawshaw)
... and near Ty Croes (David Flitcroft).
An interesting discussion on the North Wales
Train News e-group (plug!) reminds us that some years loco 47
609 was named Fire Fly (two words - from an old GWR broad gauge
loco we think) and this later became royal 47 798 Prince
William which has been seen occasionally on the Coast. Firefly
in the Thunderbirds TV show is one of the vehicles carried in
Thunderbird 2's cargo pods, kind of a fancy-looking bulldozer used for
fighting fires. - 14 July
Northern Belle news
An adventurous Northern Belle luxury charter involved a Weekend in
Dublin. The train ran out to Holyhead on Saturday 9 July, and back on
Monday 11 July, the train returning empty to England for servicing in
between the two trips. Corrie's picture above shows 67 025
Western Star running round at Holyhead on arrival on 9 July.
Passengers transfer to a coach for the journey to the ferry (Corrie)
The empty stock returns across the Stanley Embankment. (Corrie)
The empty train returns through Bangor on Monday morning, still with 67
025 (Alan Crawshaw) ...
... and passes Penmaenmawr station (Dave Sallery.) The
non-standard signalbox was built following an accident on 27 August
1950 in which the overnight Irish Mail collided with another train -
the poor sight lines from the original signalbox were partially blamed
for the accident, we believe. Some pictures of the disaster
from the National Library of Wales can be found in the very
interesting 'gathering the jewels' website.
67 025 returns with the passengers aboard through Rhosneigr. (David
Flitcroft) - 14 July
Happy days on the
Cambrian, then and now
John Dawson writes: 'I know a few readers were querying the use
of MkII stock down the Cambrian lines. Indeed, the pressure-ventilated
version of the MkII coach was a regular feature in the 1990/91
timetable. Here’s the proof of the pudding with 37 421 in
Railfreight Petroleum livery at the head of the 1G12 09:32 Pwllheli –
Birmingham NS service 8 June 1991, the inward working the 1J11 04:40
from Shrewsbury was topped by 37 430 as a far as Machynlleth
... happy days!'
Fast forward to 9 July 2005 ... Andrew Rawlins writes: 'EWS got
away with it with the Cambrian Coast Express charter from Worksop to
Aberystwyth (I'm assuming 37 406 and 37 416 got off the
Cambrian okay - they sounded in splendid from on the bank by Llanbadarn
Fawr on the way out of Aberystwyth! The consist arrived late - due to
an earlier 158 failure, (I gather), at Machynlleth which threw the
Cambrian out for a good while. It eventually arrived 30 minutes
down into Aberystwyth. However, speaking to one of the crew, it was
keeping up very well with the service in front and they enjoyed a
spirited run down the Cambrian! Leaving was spot on time, the 158's
having got themselves back to time.'
Thanks to Andrew for these pictures of the two locos at Aberystwyth.
Only nine 37/4s remain in traffic today out of the 31 originally
converted 20 years ago, but they certainly are kept busy. Saturday 16
July will see a charter to Pwllheli run by Past Time Rail, running in
the path previously used and arriving in Barmouth 10:50, Minffordd
11:30 and Pwllheli 12:20. Return from Pwllheli is 16:30, Barmouth 17:45.
- 14 July
Class 101s in the news
Thanks to Matt Cherry for these two pictures of one-time North
Wales stalwart 101 680 in action on the North York Moors
Railway on 9 July. Matt writes 'I spent a pleasant weekend staying in a
camping barn in Goathland right
next to the NYMR. We went walking fairly close to the line on
Saturday 9 July when I was surprised to se a Class 101 out and
about, and thought you might be interested to see a couple of the
photos I managed to rather hurriedly grab of it heading south between
Grosmont and Goathland (above) and later in the day following arrival
back at Grosmont (below). It did not have a unit number that I
could see and at first, from the green livery I thought it might have
been 'Daisy.'
'However, on closer examination, the paintwork was very new and a bit
of Googling on the carriage number 50204 revealed it to be ex-FNW 101
680. It was good to see that these units are still being made good use
of, although it looked like conditions on board were somewhat
crowded. All of the other trains out that day had around seven
coaches and were fairly well filled.'
Other pertinent points about Class 101s: there's a very interesting
article on the Railcar Association website at the moment called A
Farewell to 101s in North Wales, written by Eddie Knorn about a
day's riding in 2000, and the Elsecar Railway website reveals
that the actual Daisy herself will next be operating at
her new home in South Yorkshire on Saturday 30 July. - 14 July