Apart from the North Wales coast bashing 37’s, Scotland was anther popular bashing 37place, especially the Inverness-Kyle line, when they had converted dmu as a scenic coach on Mk 2 stock, if behind the 37 one had great view of it and the scenery, did some of the shove duffs 47/7 on the MK3.s scotrail services, even cabbed a DBSO once, , Inverness-Aberdeen was another popular one and the West highland line too, one week did the day sleeper coach from Edinburgh to Spean Bridle, bus to Inverness, then more 37’s out of Inverness, 5 days in a row.
My first locos were 31’s on the Birmingham-East anglia services. When went to my Aunt, which started doing on own when about 13. Did quite a few 50’s on the Waterloo-Exeter line and on final years rail tours, had 20’s to Skeggy and on rail tours, did 33’s quite a bit mainly rail tours, best one was the Rhins and Macchars Cromptons, Crewe-Birmingham-S&C-Largs-Stranraer-Glasgow-Birmingham-Crewe, bashed quite a few 56’s and 58’s, on railtours, and 58’s on service trains, Nuneaton drags, had one up to nearly 100mph once.
A lot of my bashing was railtours, with some memorable combinations, and some epic 24-48 hour railtours, up to Scotland and Cornwall, one of the best combo was a 31 and a 26 up Shap, looped at the bottom, noise was horrendous hellfire, had a 37 and 33 Crewe-Par etc, had Deltic Royal Scots Grey on railtours and service trains in preservation era, was hellfire machine and very fast, had 116mph down Shap and Beattock out of it, on service trains. plus too many other bashes to list here.
So while strictly not a main man, I certainly did some good bashes over the years, and interesting runs, I’m quite pleased with amount of locos been able to ride behind, which youngsters could only dream of now, still enjoy train travel but its definitely lost its haulage interest now, and i always chuckle a bit when youngsters say the 68’s sound good, they’re powerful but nothing like the noise of the old diesel locos like 37’s etc, count myself lucky to have been able to ride behind so many locos.
Not as desperate as St David’s to Central or St David’s to St Thomas!
