Miscellaneous

	ADB968000 is seen at Stratford during the 1979 Open Day which took place on Saturday 14th July. This Class 15 loco was originally numbered D8243. Thanks to Jeff B for supplying the exact date.
	Bescot Down Storage Sidings - Sunday 2nd October 1988.
	40012 was one of the exhibits at the 1992 Bescot Open Day which took place on Sunday 30th August. The weather on this occasion wasn't as kind as it was for the May 1990 event, but the sun shone briefly and allowed a few decent photos to be taken. I didn't write the number of the Deltic down, but I'm fairly sure that it's 55015. The locos just visible on the right are 20092 and 20169, posed on an MGR train in the throat of the Down Yard.
	40022 departs from platform 12 at Birmingham New St with a footex. I think this shot dates from the late 1970s, but I have no details for it. It was provided for Aston Villa fans, and was bound for Manchester. The snow is still falling and I recall that the game was postponed and the train didn't reach its destination. I seem to be the only person who's braved the snow, everyone else is staying under cover and doing the "going away" shot.
	Very few details available for this shot I'm afraid. A close look at the original scan reveals that the loco is 40128. It's acquired "cross-eyed" dots in the headcode boxes, and is devoid of the bodyside grills that LMR locos carried for most of their lives. 40128 was withdrawn in 1982, and this pic probably dates from about 1979. The train is almost certainly from Ellesmere Port, and is seen here passing Bescot Junction. It's destination will be Langley Green or Rowley Regis.
	44008 departs from Bescot with a mixed freight to Toton. In the background the Bescot breakdown train sits on the curve waiting for the signal. This picture was taken in autumn 1979 I think, although the leaves are still on the trees so it was probably early autumn. At this time the the loco was in pristine ex-works condition and carrying the number D8 under (at least) one cab window. Class 44s were regular visitors to the West Midlands in the 70s, and even near the end there was a daily Toton - Bescot duty which arrived mid-morning and returned an hour or so later.
	Great Central Railway held a "Mail by Rail" weekend on Saturday and Sunday 28th and 29th July 2007. D123 worked one of the Rothley - Loughborough mail trains, seen here passing Woodthorpe at 16:49.
	67014 heads south through Wylde Green on the Sutton Park line at 17:03 on Monday 9th May 2005. The Merseyrail EMU (507014) was being conveyed to Eastleigh Works for refurbishment. This service ran south on Mondays, and returned an ex-works unit on Fridays.
	Bescot, Sunday 4th November 1990. Make up your own joke.
	Met-Camm power twin E50321+E51427 arrives at Quorn with the 16:20 Loughborough - Rothley. This was taken at 16:25 on Friday 29th April 2005, and it was something of a consolation prize after D123 on the 15:45 from Loughborough came past while the sun was behind a cloud.
	A Class 101 power-twin formed of vehicles 53160 and 53164 arrived at the Chasewater Light Railway in late 2006. This set carried unit number 101685 in its last years of service working off Longsight depot in Manchester, where it was colloquially known as "Daisy",. It was withdrawn from traffic at Christmas 2003, a mere 47 years after these vehicles entered service. This shot was taken at 13.21 on Sunday 14th January 2007, and shows the 50 year old DMU departing from Chasewater Heaths with 53164 leading.
	53160 leads the return trip as Daisy arrives at Brownhills at 13.43. The nickname derives from the diesel railcar in Rev Awdry's books, and is now carried on a small panel above the vehicle numbers.
	Tyseley based DMU twin T208 coasts through Ryecroft Jct with a Hednesford - Walsall service in a shot which was probably taken during the summer of 1989. Ryecroft was still looking remarkably rural back then, despite the fact that it's almost in the centre of Walsall. New housing would soon be built on the land to the right, and unchecked tree growth would close down the view, but at this stage you could still see Mill Lane bridge in the background and trains off the Sutton Park line were visible as they crossed Cartbridge Lane.
	T408 forms a southbound Cross-City train, seen leaving Four Oaks in the late summer of 1989. Much was to change at Four Oaks when electrification came in 1992/93. Apart from the masts and wiring the signalbox closed, with control of the line passing to the Aston Signalling Centre (located at Duddeston in the old Vauxhall Shunt Frame). The DMUs also disappeared, being superceded first by a mix of older EMUs, and a year or two later by the Class 323s which are still used today. Trains still turn back at Four Oaks - in the midweek off-peak timetable there are six trains an hour on the Cross-City, of which two turn at Lichfield Trent Valley, two at Lichfield City and two at Four Oaks.
	150217 passes Leamore, just south of Bloxwich, at 16:05 on Monday 30th May 2005. The train is 2H69, the 15:42 New St - Rugeley Trent Valley. I'd gone out for 66557 on a Rugeley-bound coal train but it came about one minute too soon, just before the sun emerged and just before I'd got my camera out of the bag. Not wishing to waste the rather nice light I hung on for the unit, which was just about worth doing as it was one of the recent acquisitions from Anglia, and had yet to be spoilt by having Central Trains branding splashed all over it. I'm fond of this spot, but the background of trees can make it awkward for green-liveried trains, and it also makes for largish JPEGs as all the leaf detail doesn't compress as well as sky.
	150237 passes Leamore at 14:16 on Wednesday 21st February 2007 while forming the 13:35 Stafford - New St (2H15). I'd gone out hoping to bag a Class 66 on a coal, but this unit was the only train that came past in what was rather nice light.
	When I visited Whittlesey on Friday 8th September 2006 I had to have a picture of the signalbox. Ideally the train in this shot would have been a freight, preferably one with a GBRf Class 66 on the front as this is their patch. If it had to be a unit I'd have preferred a One Railway version. In the event the only freight which came west in the right time slot was the Whitemoor - Tallington trip which was hauled by 66240, and it passed while the sun was behind a cloud (again). In fact four or five units came past before the sun shone properly on one of them, and that one happened to be 158783 working 1M22, the 12:57 Norwich - Liverpool.
	On the same day as the previous picture 170201 worked 1E78, the 12:38 Liverpool St - Peterborough via Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds. It's seen here arriving at March, bang on time at 15:15, and passing 66555 standing in the down loop. The freight is 6M14, the Harlow - Bardon Hill stone empties. This is a bit of an opportunist shot, as I'd only stopped in March to get a drink, and 6M14 was stood in the loop as I drove over the level crossing. It followed the unit, but when it departed the sun was yet again behind a cloud and the scene was only half-lit.
	170398 runs alongside the motorway as it passes Bescot at 14:22 on Saturday 3rd March 2007. Stour Valley trains were being diverted via Bescot at this time, in addition to the regular Trent Valley trains which are booked this way at weekends. I suspect the train is 2J41, the 13:57 New St - Shrewsbury (due Wolves at 14:15). Scheduled Trent Valley diversions no longer produce a significant volume of traffic along the Grand Junction, not in the daytime anyway, as many of them are booked to run via the Stour and call at New St. However a Stour diversion is a different thing altogether and trains tend to follow each other when this happens. The spot from which this photo is taken was once the site of Bescot Drop Forgings. It's currently something of a wasteland, with several large piles of earth in place. However the land has been acquired for development and this view is unlikely to be available for long.
	304021 rolls off the Stockport line into Wilmslow with a train for Alderley Edge. This picture was taken at 17.29 on Monday 15th April 1991. I can't remember what prompted me to alight at Wilmslow on my way home from Manchester, other than the glorious light. As well as this unit I also photographed 86209 on 1G62, the 17.18 Piccadilly - New St, and 304013 on a local to Crewe. I remember the 304s with great fondness. The doors in each bay could lead to icy draughts when people alighted in the winter, but the heaters were so good that you were instantly warm once the door was shut. Not that heat was an issue on this lovely spring day, as the number of open droplights testifies.
	309611 and 309615 head north past the site of Tipton Gas Works with the "Network Exile" railtour on Saturday 15th November 1986. In the mid to late 1990s there were workings for Manchester-based Class 309s that brought them to the West Midlands - but this 1986 railtour produced bona fide Eastern Region units that never normally appeared on the LMR. In later years other railtours would take them away from their usual Essex haunts, but this one was, I think, the groundbreaker. It also visited Walsall using the Darlaston - Pleck chord (rarely used by electric trains), and eventually ended up in the Manchester area, taking in the Hadfield branch which hadn't long been converted to 25KV.
	Class 310 EMU 070 stands at New St with a Manchester train in the summer of 1980. These units still had the original rounded cab windows at this time. I don't recall AM10s being all that common north of Stafford, this being Class 304 territory. Of course I'm assuming the destination blind is accurate, which I suspect it is.
	4-EPB unit 5248 departs from Petts Wood with a down service. Headcode 12 indicates that this was a Charing Cross - Orpington train, and thus Petts Wood would have been the penultimate stop. 4-EPB units were later designated Class 415, and they came in two varieties: the S.R. variant and the later B.R. design. The S.R. units were built between 1951 and 1957, and 5248 was one of the later ones. This picture was taken in autumn 1989, by which time the unit would have been facelifted (and thus been designated 415/4). EPBs lasted on the South-Eastern division until 1995.
	This is another photo from the same session which yielded the shot of 5248 above. This pic shows a pair of 4-CEP units, with refurbished 1516 leading. I don't recall seeing too many blue and grey units on this day, they were getting a bit scarce at this stage. I have a similar shot of one in Jaffa Cake livery, and NSE liveried units were also quite common - but this blue-and-grey one looks better in my view. Headcode 18 indicates a Victoria - Ramsgate/Margate train. I always had a soft spot for CEPs, with fond memories of seeing 13 and 14 coach boat trains at places like Ashford and Tonbridge. If I recall correctly these were formed CEP+BEP+CEP, plus MLV or MLV+TLV.
	4-VEP 7827 arrives at Portsmouth Harbour in this shot which was taken in the spring of 1980. Route 82 indicates that this is a semi-fast from Waterloo. To the best of my recall I've only ever been to Portsmouth Harbour while en-route to the Isle of Wight, and taking a few pictures from the platform end would have almost certainly been a time filling move. Looking back I wish that I'd taken more pictures of first-generation units, especially Southern Region EMUs like this one.
	Lymington branch aside, the final workings of slam-door units on the Southern Region took place at the end of November 2005 - and I took my last photos of these units in the previous June. This shot shows 4-VEP 3454 passing Wandsworth Road at 15.31 on Tuesday 7th June 2005. I'm not sure what the actual working was, but route 64 is Hastings/Eastbourne to Victoria.
	An hour or so before the previous shot 3587 headed south past Wandsworth Road at 14.23. Not my best composition this, being something of a grab shot as I'd only just arrived when this train came by. By mid-2005 slammers were getting uncommon and I didn't manage a better shot of a southbound train, despite hanging around for quite a while.
	A Class 506 unit calls at Guide Bridge with a Hadfield - Manchester Piccadilly train. Note the Class 76 loco just visible to the left of the signalbox. I've got no date for this picture but it would have been taken in 1979 or 1980 I think. Although this is almost certainly a midweek picture most of my visits to Guide Bridge were made at weekends using "Saturday Saver" tickets from Walsall or Birmingham. Our itinerary never varied: train to Reddish North and walk to Reddish depot; back to Piccadilly and out to Guide Bridge for the stabling point there. Then walk to Victoria for a train to Dean Lane and Newton Heath depot. Back to Victoria for an hour watching the units, having something to eat and a sit down. And finally walk back to Piccadilly for the train home. Manchester's depots had a friendly reputation and we were never refused at any of these sheds or stabling points.
	The New Measurement Train (NMT) went north through Dudley Port at 13:45 on Thursday 23rd March 2006. Frankly HSTs really don't do much for me. Although I was taking railway pictures in 1976 when the first ones appeared in regular service I've taken no more than a dozen or so shots of them in the subsequent 30 years. The previous HST shot I took was in June 2003. That was also of the NMT, which at least has novelty value.
	MPV DR98958 and DR98908 pass Hamstead at 12.55 on Wednesday 1st November 2006. This was an RHTT diagram, one of two daytime diagrams based at Bescot during autumn 2006.
	These next four pictures were taken on the morning of Friday 30th April 1993. My notes tell me that they were the only pictures I took that day, but it's unlikely that I made a special trip to visit Merry Hill to take them because monorails aren't really my thing. It's more likely that I'd been somewhere in the area to photograph a real train, and having failed in that mission I popped in to take these photos as the sun was out. In retrospect I'm rather glad that I did go that day - because the monorail was soon gone and I never bothered to photograph it again. This first shot shows a train entering the station at the south end of the main complex, and we're looking at the rear of the train here. The doors at the entrance to the stations worked automatically, opening to allow trains in, and then closing behind them.
	This shot shows a train departing from the same station, and running onto the nearside track over what I've recently learned is called a rotary switch. This stretch at the south end of the line was double-tracked (strictly speaking that should be double-beamed), and on this day at least conventional left-hand running was the normal practise.
	The same "West Midlands Gas" train is seen a few yards further south, crossing over Car Park 2 on its way to the terminus station near the Boulevard. The monorail was operational from 1991 to 1995, when it succumbed to a mixture of technical and safety issues. I didn't visit Merry Hill often during this period, and I always avoided busy periods such as the run-up to Christmas because the place would be gridlocked. But when I did go I seem to recall that the monorail wasn't always operating, and when it was running I never saw many people actually use it. This may have been because it didn't really go anywhere useful, and you had to pay to ride it.
	This third train was in "McDonalds" livery, and is also seen crossing Car Park 2. This monorail was a Von Roll system. It had been out of use for six years when it was dismantled in 2001. The equipment was sold to the operators of the Broadbeach system in Australia (it's near Brisbane, in Queensland). At Merry Hill there's now little or no evidence that a monorail ever existed - this very "21st Century" looking transport system didn't even survive into the 21st Century.
	Midland Metro tram number 13 climbs away from Hill Top tunnel on the approach to Black Lake (West Bromwich). This shot was taken at 16.41 on Friday 2nd September 2005, and the tram is heading south towards Birmingham. A deceptively rural looking spot this, but it isn't really - the tree-lined cutting just gives that impression. Wednesbury has two Metro stations which are very close together, but either side of those two stations are the two longest stretches between stations. Tram 13 is on the Wednesbury Great Western Street to Black Lake stretch.
	In autumn 2006 I acquired a new lens which had an image stabilization feature, and I was interested to discover what could be achieved using it handheld at night. In particular I was keen to find out the maximum exposure time that would produce sharp results. These test shots were taken on Sunday 17th December 2006, and they suggested that it's possible to take unsupported shots at 1/15 and get a decent result most of the time. Bracing against some sort of support, as was the case in this shot, extends that time to as long as 1/4 of a second. This shot isn't pin-sharp, although you can't see it in the downsized JPEG. It shows Midland Metro tram number 05 pausing at Black Lake with a Birmingham bound service. I was leaning on a handrail, and the exposure was 1/4 sec at f4 with the sensor set to ISO400. The Canon 24-105 lens was set at the long end (97mm), which might have contributed to the slight softness in the original image.
	This shot was also taken on Sunday 17th December and shows tram 13 at Wednesbury Parkway with a northbound service. The illuminated building to the left of the tram is the Metro depot. The exposure details for this shot are the same as the one above, i.e. 1/4 sec, f4, ISO400, but this time there are no problems with the sharpness of the original image. The focal length used was 32mm, and again I was able to brace my arms on top of a fence.
	This last shot from Sunday 17th December shows Birmingham-bound tram 03 pausing at Wednesbury Parkway. There was less support available here, and I was leaning against a lamp post rather than on top of a fence. Nonetheless an exposure of 1/6, f4, ISO400 has produced a sharp result. The focal length used was 24mm.