big jim

Just one from last night, rugby to craven arms with the rail milling machine, 66780 leading and 66776 on the rear got a week of this train now, it’s quite a good little job

Off to work in a min, rugby to craven arms! just got back from the local theatre with my eldest lad after seeing Romesh Ranganathan, absolutely brilliant, a very last minute decision, got a return ticket at 15:00 this afternoon for it while buying some other tickets, so glad I did too joined the members club at the theatre and managed to get a load of tickets for shows right up until January on 2 for 1 or reduced rate, £30 a year membership and saved myself a good £200 today with tickets for ‘joseph’ ‘peter pan panto’ (with cannon and ball), Clinton Baptiste (dodgy clairvoyant off Phoenix nights) and Nigel slaters ‘toast’, that should keep the family entertained until the new year got 9 to 5 in a couple of weeks in Manchester as well as pantos there and stoke and comedy club gigs in Whitchurch and Sutton Coldfield with the eldest lad again

Ian Allan was a regular shop for me to buy from, ok mainly from the discount table but I did buy quite a few non discounted locos and wagons from there such as the China clay silver bullets and a couple of Bachmann 66s and now it’s closing I’m unlikely to get there before it shuts because of my roster! Still need to use the £10 on my loyalty card though!

Some from last night, donny to Toton with a stud farm train new units in donny and my train in Doncaster VQ ready to pull out and run up to st caths to run round and head back to Toton, last minute loco swap as when I prepped the loco in down decoy the GSM radio handset wasn’t working on 66745 so I couldn’t take it and swapped to 66766 rugby to craven arms tonight

Yes thats right, it’s too far back in the formation to give accurate readings so it was removed there is/was talk of one of the powercars having a pantograph fitted over the old guards area with recording equipment below but nothing has come of that as yet

It’s probably to signify where the “plain line pattern recognition” train’s data is captured from, never seen one before it would most likely be on the sleeper so the below solebar cameras would pick it up

He’s Scottish, tunnocks tea cakes would be nice

Not a chance! You can being me a cuppa down

Just one from last night, still on A/L but I’d phoned up and queried something on one of my jobs for next week and was asked if I could work hat night, first I said no but then it didn’t stop raining all morning and I was getting bored sat in the caravan and club house, I was coming home today anyway so I thought, why not, a bit of extra overtime for me worked the Dagenham cars from crewe to rugby with 66730 day off today then properly back to it tomorrow, got a doncaster to Toton on Sunday then a week working out of craven arms with a rail milling machine, annoyingly the machine is working between shotton and Buckley every night so I have to do 120 mile round trip ‘transit’ from craven arms every night to site then stay in a hotel in shrewsbury despite me trying my best to get it stabled nearer to site, it can’t go in coleham but could have gone in wrexham, gobowen, coton hill or dee marsh without issue

Been very busy in work so not had a chance to do anything in the garage I’ve got some display cases to put up on the walls and a few more buildings to plant but other than that nothing has happened for a while

Yep, you can see me in the 2nd pic in the orange coat waiting to get on the loco

I know it’s probably a bit late now but Silloth is worth a look for a couple of hours max, there is a little museum in the library (open til 4pm) that has a lot about the local wildlife and a couple of models of the old railway station and yard again a bit late but the main chippy in silloth prides itself on having gluten free batter etc, always massive queues there though which is the downside but there are other chippies in town too There is also a toy soldier museum and a new motorcycle museum (not been to that yet though) davidsons ice creams on the front for a nice selection of ices there is a new statue on the front of a guy on a bench looking out over the Solway, it’s about 15ft high, really nice A bit further south in maryport there is a little aquarium, maritime museum and a very good roman museum We have a static caravan in silloth so come here every year (I’m sat in the van typing this) and we’ve still not ventured too far into the Lake District as it’s just normally too busy, cockermouth is nice too, Wordsworth’s house, brewery, river side walks etc, Whitehaven has a rum museum and quite a nice quayside area too (and a weatherspoons!)

Mike: if a train runs late its normally “tough luck” and you have to stick with it as on the freight side thee doesn’t tend to be a pool of drivers sat round in depots spare ready to jump if it does go wrong, it’s the same with almost freight companies not just gb, passenger never seems so bad as they always had spare turns if the job goes really wrong and you can then it’s possible to get the train parked up in a siding somewhere and leave it securely and get a taxi home, of course if your not feeling up to it (ie tired) then you can refuse to work a train any further or be put in for a short break if a job is cancelled last minute then you can revert to spare where you just stay home with your phone on and hope you don’t get a call to come in, if it’s cancelled a few days in advance then you could be asked to move to another turn that is known needs covering but you should get 24 hours notice, a lot of the time if it happens to me I look at the vacancy sheet to see what I may cop for and put it to rosters to put me on it so at least I have an idea what I’m doing so can plan my day We get or roster on a Thursday afternoon then the diagrams come on a Friday evening, quite why I don’t know as if you spot an error on the diagram it’s too late for rosters to amend so it’s left to control to sort out, an error may be something like a job may have traction you don’t sign or, as I’ve just had for next weeks job (I’ve had early diagrams sent as it’s a special turn) I’m shown as working from Wembley Central to craven arms and I don’t sign south of rugby on the wcml so that needs amending and covering between Wembley and rugby

It’s quite unusual to work 2 different trains in one job, yesterday was 2 turns cobbled together as neither were covered and they could easily be amalgamated jobs that start away from my Home Depot (hams hall) normally get a hire car sent to my house or you are shown as going passenger to the start location (the diagram will show to travel from hams hall but a lot of the time I can do it from crewe, if I can get home of course!) I tend to do a lot of out of area jobs because of my route card, diagrammed jobs can have hire cars which you have to pick up from hams hall/bescot at either the start or end of a job but hey will amend it to my home address if it makes things simpler (ie we have a booked job that starts in Toton so I get the car delivered to home to save driving 60 miles south to hams hall then 40 miles back north to Toton!), you may also have a relieving driver bring you a car at a terminal if you work a train in and he is working one out which you take home I have a freight duty pass for when I’m on duty to travel pass if it says so on my diagram i have to travel to work in on my own time if a job starts in hams hall which I don’t get paid for

Compare it to a modern day view, you may have to move the camera to face the blue Ford Fiesta https://goo.gl/maps/wEcGa6xAPet81nQQ6

You saw it twice! I had it on a ballast last weekend and close up the blue is actually metallic paint i had the best view of it too, from the inside where you can’t see what the outside looks like!

The whole area must have been a fascinating place to have seen back in its heyday, seeing the place now it’s hard to picture quite how much was crammed into the space and quite how it was worked regarding marshalling trains etc must have took some serious planning and forward thinking ive not been to tuebrook or the docks for a good 8 months now, must try and get down there again soon before it lapses off my card

Some from today, first up did the cement from Stafford to clitheroe stafford, sleeper passing through Then my train arrived 66756 up front and away to clitheroe Then it was taxi to hellifield to get on a charter to appleby, Met RMweb user smithington smythe on the platform who was out photographing the train also as an aside anyone who visits hellifield station, the little model shop on the platform has closed down now, and the cafe is running very reduced hours/days due to “issues”, wasn’t even open today with a lot of people about 50007 and 50049 up front into settle for 30 mins where I picked out a dead pigeon and pheasant from the coupling hook before I took the photo! we then set off north, before leaving settle we were asked by the organisers if we could stop on ribblehead viaduct so a passenger could spread the ashes of a relative from the rear window of the train as it was his last wish so we obliged and positioned the train on the viaduct for a couple of minutes where I jumped down and grabbed a couple of shots myself as it’s not somewhere you can normally get photos from! Then it was away to Appleby The train then shunted away into the old warcop branch and the logs passed by heading for chirk I was going to get the passenger train back to carlisle from Appleby but it was so packed I just gave up and got back on the charter to carlisle, got dropped off on the chord between the s+c and wcml, walked back to my car and went back to the caravan to continue my annual leave!

Xbox live has forza motorsport 6 as a free game this month and the Microsoft store has the ultimate DLC bundle reduced from £80 to £7 which has all the available DLC included, would have been rude not to really! not tried it yet but will give it a blast later also downloaded the heavy freight add on for TSW which includes classes 08 and 40 and oil trains etc

Some from last night, top and tail ballast, crewe to cheadle hulme via Stafford 66718 on the rear 66767 up front to stafford Changed ends and away via stoke to cheadle including a 90 min wait at grande for 3 other ballasts from Basford hall to pass me, bit strange that I was the first to leave but the last to arrive on site, why I wasn’t last to leave Basford hall I don’t know! and this morning walking back to the car cement and class 50s tomorrow

Bit of a sad bump for this topic.... they have started to demolish more of the works including the huge wall along west street that during the war was painted to protect the works from bombers, basically everything on the Chester side of the traverser is being flattened to build a new housing estate, managed to get a quick pic from a taxi yesterday another bit of history gone, that and the old north shed wall demolished so far this month!

No, don’t recognise him, don’t tend to see or mingle with many ‘southern’ drivers i wouldnt mind a trip to calvert as I’ve not been there for a while and it’s due to have big changes happen soon in relation to HS2 and east west, from what I can make out the token hut will move from north of Aylesbury to Quainton road and the line north of there will effectively become one long siding with the ground frames at Calvert becoming hand points

Says the bringer of the ice creams! The Monday job job I have is conducting the GBRf 50s between hellifield to Appleby which should be fun, hopefully it will be a nice sunny day

I sure do, managed to get it signed off with Colas about 6 months before I left

Supposed to be 2 weeks off but I’ve got a weekend of work coming up doing some interesting stuff MOD last night crewe to Didcot via kineton, first time I’ve done the branch since I signed it 66712 at fenny waiting to go after running the train round Token for the branch Back at fenny Into Didcot (without the cooling towers!) rhen it was quicker to go into london Paddington and across to Euston than it was to wait for a train to oxford and onward to Birmingham and crewe! 345 unit in paddington Last time I was there last year this was all HSTs! Love em or hate em they look the part under the roof Over to Euston and home, possession tomorrow night near Macclesfield (again first train over there since signing it off) and then a couple of jobs combined Monday, one where I can wave at Newbryford as I pass his house and the 2nd half has him wishing he was in work on Monday