big jim

Couple from yesterday, iport again, 66748 this time And Some from today, as micks pic shows I was on the clay tanks crewe to carlisle Crewe Another variation of the new london north western livery on a 350, this one looks far better than the original in my opinion TPE livery 68 There was also a northern 195 unit in Tommy’s lane but not easy to photograph My train, 66739 again 10 mins in Blackburn 45 mins in hellifield Arcrow Quarry train passing through And into carlisle And one of my old chariots! And that was that, Toton tripper tomorrow

I’m AV all next week so I’d better not cop for your job while your off supping ale!

so not a new thing then!

the strangest "power lines" ive seen, as in they are something i dont pay attention to but these caught my eye, are in peterborough running parallel with the railway out towards march, they look almost contenental to me, certainly not seen anything like them elsewhere? hopefully this will take you there to do a streetview https://goo.gl/maps/q1HsJoU91D62

My name was mentioned by the planning department yesterday to work it very soon for part of its trip back from Eastleigh to Doncaster if I don’t get another job on the particular day in question That’s barrow Hill, the line coming off is to the round house and yes it’s sharp!

I believe It was dragged to hanwell yard by a 73 from the Willesden direction via the NLL then let loose from there Marcus37 has some pics from the tour as he drive the 50s on it, he has put some up in his peakdale wood thread already

Pic 732 isn’t that the north end of crewe, Tommy’s lane sidings in the background and an electric coming off the Manchester line? A lot has changed since 1977 so I may be wrong (and I was only 2 years old back then!)

Funnily enough seeing the pic of the renumbered 50011 got me thinking the last time I saw the REAL 50011 was in crewe in pretty much the same place, while waiting to go to Montrose with my dad back in 1987? our train was 2 hours late and while we were waiting a strange headlight came round the curve from shrewsbury direction and low and behold it was 50011 on its final run from iirc Cardiff to crewe on a postal train before heading into crewe works to be withdrawn and used as a mobile generator/load bank in the works

Shame i was working in and out of donny, I would have happily 2nd manned you out of crewe! (Or even come down and got some pics) Been a funny old tour that one, all over the country and I never caught sight of it once

Couple of engineers trains today, first up Toton to Doncaster Belmont with 66770 And as soon as I got there straight onto 66752 to head back to Toton with some auto ballasters And that was that for today

That last pic, it looks more like coming off the dovey estuary towards dovey jn (possibly the signal box in the distance?)

You need to get learning Doncaster iport! Your not wrong about RDW though, pick and choose yer jobs almost

Flat wagons for maintenance crewe to Doncaster Picked it up in Basford hall, first stop nuneaton An hour in barrow hill while nothing passed then over to Masborough for the usual photo stop 2 ballasts tomorrow, toton to donny and back

Yes I was looking at the frames and realised I’d need them too

I quite fancy doing a pair of these instead of a Mersey rail unit as I saw a GBRf 66 pulling them last night with a southern unit of some sort in between https://flic.kr/p/ogBQkc (Not my pic) Are the sides priced above a complete one piece side now rather than 2 half per side?

Not bothered with pics the last few days as it’s been far too wet to go outside and get any! Only one from today, an issue with a wagon meant I had to go and collect a 2nd loco and take it to iport to pull the train back to release the train loco which was trapped in the head shunt! First time 2 locos have been there together Crewe to Doncaster tomorrow with some empty intermodal flats then a couple of engineers trains into and out of donny on Sunday

My ‘charter rake’ is a bulled up set of hachette ‘glued to the front of a magazine’ maroon MK1 coaches, all I’ve done visually is paint the roof, add a cant rail stripe and west coast rail decals from Railtec Not a prototypical rake but a damn sight cheaper than buying 8 similar Bachmann or Hornby coaches and more than passable as an excursion train in my opinion Next job in them when I can be bothered is to add figures to all the seats, got 200 of them off eBay to fit

Yep, spotted that earlier on Twitter, to me it looks remarkably similar to the new freightliner logo! Anyway back to this weeks job, same job, same loco, same picture locations, different weather! This week wa stage first train out of doncaster iport to Southampton and return, a job I have been doing between coleshill and Doncaster and back, a few teething issues regards timings which meant I didn’t get home for 2 days and had to stay in a hotel in Birmingham but it settled down today and ran as planned Monday: 66752 “the Hoosier state” Running round in iport After fuelling, back on the wagons 66789 passing by Waiting in swinton Saltney And off to a hotel, back in the next day for the same job, stopped at my fave photographic stop of Masborough station, I like to get shots of what ever I’m working under the arch here! After dropping the train in iport it was off to Roberts road for fuel and return to the iport Onto today and again a wait at swinton, didn’t bother to photograph the freightliner last night only to discover it was 66413 ‘the wasp’ on it, went out tonight and it was a plain boring 66 Hst again! And into coleshill Same again tomorrow!

It’s a work in progress, weathering to add over time!

my eldest lad has been blasting the following artists via the amazon echo (hes only 14) johnny cash willy nelson tammy wynette jethro tull frankie valli c.w. mcall he does a mean johnny cash, willy nelson and c.w. mcall on the karaoke too

i bet i know where they found it (where i left it 2 days ago!)

Hams hall rescue mission today, obviously no pics of the site itself but our job was to man the locos to ferry containers and wagons back and forth between the derailment site and hams hall The line was under possession so all moves required the ES (engineering supervisor) to speak to the box and set the routes to and from the various lines 66751 and 66726 doing the honours top and tail 3 wagons to load the containers on Meaty looking 66 this one! Kirow crane passing by to cross over and head back to the site Once we got the first 2 containers out of the way I had to go and fire up an ews 66 to use it to recover one of the wagons Waiting the next move And once on the wagon it was walking pace back to hams hall and into the cripple siding At that point I went home having spent the best part of 11 hours on site, in all an interesting day

i just got asked to help as I’m not in the roster til next week but yes we had 2 drivers on site today doing whatever was asked of us

I was sat in the EWS 66 while that was going on

I was ushered out before royalty arrived so never got to leave there! Will do next week though, got it for 5 days Couple from yesterday, driving a road learning loco from Toton to chesterfield and back a few times, should have been hams hall but obviously that wasn’t going to happen Annoying it was 66711 so I’m gonna have to buy the Bachmann model now International rescue today at hams hall