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57003 heads east through Washwood Heath with 4L93 Lawley St - Felixstowe. This was taken at 10:15 on Friday 16th March. At the north end
of Washwood Heath yard it crossed 57004 heading along the reversible goods line with 4M86 Felixstowe - Lawley St. The regular use of Class
57s by Freightliner was coming to a close when this picture was taken. By the summer the remaining ones were only being used as pilot locos,
or on infrequent mainline outings. This continued into the autumn of 2007, by which time some of Freightliner's cast-offs had been re-instated
to traffic with DRS.
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57006 accelerates away from Whitacre Jct with a fully-laden 4L93 Lawley St - Felixstowe freightliner. This shot was taken at 10:27 on
Friday 2nd March 2007, from the then rather muddy footpath which parallels the line east of the junction. In March it's difficult to
find a spot where no shadows fall on the loco - this shot is better in April or May when the sun is higher and the shadows less prominent.
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4L93 Lawley St - Felixstowe had 57003 again on Wednesday 21st March 2007. This picture was taken at 11:02 and shows the train
a short distance to the east of Whitacre Jct, a couple of hundred yards further east than the previous shot of 57006. 4L93 is normally
a very good timekeeper, but on this occasion it was running about 30 minutes late. A power failure at Rugby meant that it had been held
at Water Orton.
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57011 has 57004 dead-inside on 4O29 Trafford Park - Southampton, seen here passing Bescot station at 14.52 on Saturday 2nd October 2004.
This train had gone AWOL, having been reported past Stafford about 1½ hours earlier. The normal running time from Stafford to
Bescot is about 30 mins, so it had obviously been looped en-route.
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57305 passes Washwood Heath Sidings No 1 box with a Wolverhampton - Nuneaton Pendo drag on Saturday 1st July 2006. This shot was taken at 10:35
and I believe the train is the late running 1B21 09:18 Wolverhampton - Euston (about 45 down). The brown and white building in the background
is the Kappa SSK factory, which re-cycles paper into industrial packaging. Behind that are the flats around Duddeston.
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57308 passes Whitacre Jct with 1B48, the 12:05 Wolverhampton - Euston, diverted via Nuneaton due to engineering work on the Coventry
route. This picture was taken at 12:53 on Monday 28th August 2006, a day of sunny intervals and dark clouds.
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57312 approaches Coseley with 1B22, the 16.18 Wolverhampton - Euston. This shot was taken at 16.26 on Sunday 21st August 2005,
when Euston trains were being dragged between Wolverhampton and Nuneaton. Not the exact result I was after as some high cloud
had taken the top off the light, and there was slightly less sun on the nose of the loco than I'd wanted. But my camera needed an
outing and not taking any sort of shot over what had been a lovely weekend would have been rather wasteful.
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57313 coasts into Birmingham New St with 1B38, the 12:18 Wolverhampton - Euston. This shot was taken at 12:45 on Saturday 2nd April
2005, the first day of a new season of Nuneaton "drags". In the past Euston trains were only dragged over the non-electrified
stretch of line between New St and Nuneaton, but now that the (passenger) railway has lost the art of coupling and uncoupling
the diesel stays on to and from Wolverhampton. New St is pretty useless for photos, but this shot from the end of platform 4B is one
of the very few available. 57313 was once 47371, a Knottingley coal loco when I was growing up. In those days it would have been
incredibly rare in the West Midlands, but I have a dim memory of once seeing it at New St on a summer Saturday cross-country train
heading west. The less said about what's been done to it now the better.
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57601 climbs towards Bloxwich with a 2Z01 Stafford - Crewe inspection saloon working on Thursday 29th June 2006. This train had visited
the Chiltern line and Oxford during the day. Its return north saw it routed through New St, Bescot and Cannock and I chose to cover it at
Leamore, just south of Bloxwich. The train was due here at 16:45 but didn't appear until 17:37, by which time I was beginning to wonder
whether it had gone off route. In the event the late running resulted in a long wait, but I was happy enough having got it in the sun -
something that wasn't completely guaranteed on this day.
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57601 again, this time climbing away from Bordesley Jct with 1T66, the 09:42 New St - Cheltenham relief train. This service ran between
Tuesday 13th and Friday 16th March 2007, and provided extra capacity for the Cheltenham Festival race meeting. It was booked via the Camp
Hill line, although the corresponding return in the evening ran via Selly Oak. I'd attempted this shot on Wednesday 14th, but the light
wasn't really satisfactory. No such problems on Friday 16th though, and this picture was taken at 09:50 with the train running right time.
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