Unusual routing of Liverpool - Penzance SO working early '70s

Back in the 1970's the Summer Saturdays workings were of particular interest, not least because of the variety of motive power and routings.

One such working I have found for the early seventies was 1V76 the 08.45 SO Liverpool LS - Penzance, which was routed along the WCML to Stafford, thence via Bushbury jct, Walsall, Saltley, and Bordesley to join the MR main line thus avoiding New Street. The train was diesel hauled throughout (there is a c1974 picture of 47332 with the working at Norton Bridge in the Bradford Barton album "Diesels in the West Midlands and Central Wales").

Was this the only instance of this route being used regularly. and were there any other curious routes around the West Midlands used to avoid the New St bottleneck on summer Saturdays?

The ultimate diversion was the traditional route dating back to pre-BR days of avoiding the West Midlands altogether by sending NW/SW trains via the Marches line and the Severn Tunnel. But within the Birmingham area itself the Camp Hill route was used at least until 1989 for trains from the Derby direction to head towards either Cheltenham or Banbury without serving New Street. And in VXC days there was one summer when a small number of 67-hauled relief trains used the Sutton Park line as part of their avoidance of New Street routings.

Interesting - I hadn't realized that these New St avoiding routes were used so recently, but I knew the North and West route (as the Western called the Shrewsbury & Hereford Joint line) had quite heavy traffic in the summer. The Bradford Barton book I mentioned has several photos of SO services on this line.

The Liverpool - Penzance SO was advertised as non-stop from Crewe to Cheltenham but made a service stop to change crews at Walsall. The Temple Meads working timetable does not indicate a loco change there so I presume the 47 worked through to Plymouth.

This looks like a relief/hangover from the longstanding daily 09.00 Liverpool Lime Street to Plymouth, and its equivalent return service, which formed our regular connection back to Taunton when we moved the Wirral in the 1960s. I do recall this main train being full and standing on a summer Saturday departure from Liverpool in those times.

My hunch would be that it was electrically hauled from Liverpool to Crewe, and diesel beyond. This is certainly what the daily service did. If the Class 47 did work through it would need to be a WR one as only those with GWR ATC were normally allowed west of Bristol (or on the North-and-West route). There was an overnight summer weekend service which also used the Sutton Park line southbound as well, as some enthusiasts wrote about taking it in the Railway Magazine of the era, and being awake to experience the unusual Birmingham suburbs while the rest of the train was asleep.

Until 1970 the North and West route was of course the main route for NW-SW traffic, including trains like the Manchester-Plymouth sleeper.
When I lived in Great Malvern around 1980 we had the Plymouth-Birmingham-Crewe-Scotland sleeper routed via Hereford and Worcester for a few weekends.

When the trains ran via the N&W route, and the Severn Tunnel was closed on winter Sunday mornings for maintenance, they ran by various different diversion routes, initially by the Severn Bridge until that was knocked down, thereafter from Bristol to Gloucester Central, and the single-track line through Ross-on-Wye to Hereford. This latter route had to open all the intermediate signal boxes to exchange tokens etc. This lasted into diesel days but stopped when that line closed.

I can imagine that after this a northbound train might pass Malvern in either direction. dependent on whether it was the Severn Tunnel or Hereford to Shrewsbury that was closed.

The Severn Bridge was broken before we used the line, but one Sunday my mother, travelling on her own that time, solemnly noted down all the intermediate token exchange stations on the Ross line where the train had slowed to walking pace for the exchange, "for my information"!

Numerous routes were used for summer extras into the 1990s - the Bescot route was also used to add capacity between Wolverhampton and Birmingham.

Taunton said:

This looks like a relief/hangover from the longstanding daily 09.00 Liverpool Lime Street to Plymouth, and its equivalent return service, which formed our regular connection back to Taunton when we moved the Wirral in the 1960s. I do recall this main train being full and standing on a summer Saturday departure from Liverpool in those times.

My hunch would be that it was electrically hauled from Liverpool to Crewe, and diesel beyond. This is certainly what the daily service did. If the Class 47 did work through it would need to be a WR one as only those with GWR ATC were normally allowed west of Bristol (or on the North-and-West route). There was an overnight summer weekend service which also used the Sutton Park line southbound as well, as some enthusiasts wrote about taking it in the Railway Magazine of the era, and being awake to experience the unusual Birmingham suburbs while the rest of the train was asleep.

Click to expand...

The 1973-4 WTT for Section G has the 08.45 SO from Liverpool as D455 north of Crewe. Section D has it D455 via Portobello Jc, Darlaston Jc. and Pleck Jc to Walsall arr 10L43, where L signifies "stops to change locomotive/trainmen". The loco described in the Bradford Barton photo, 47332 was a Bescot engine at the time (1974) so it looks like a Bescot turn Liverpool - Walsall and presumably thence a WR allocated loco forward.

Czesziafan said:

One such working I have found for the early seventies was 1V76 the 08.45 SO Liverpool LS - Penzance, which was routed along the WCML to Stafford, thence via Bushbury jct, Walsall, Saltley, and Bordesley to join the MR main line thus avoiding New Street.

Click to expand...

I went on 1V76 once, probably joining at Crewe, because I looked for unusual routes at the time. There were far more NE/SW trains which avoided Birmingham New Street by taking the direct route Landor Street Junction - Saint Andrews Junction at the time, but as mentioned already in this thread these gradually stopped. I don't recall any other service using the Walsall-Park Lane Junction avoiding route for sure. I also managed Rugeley to Birmingham when it was a freight-only route, on a Sunday diversion. Lichfield-Walsall also, I don't know when that was. The one line I never travelled on was Walsall-Stourbridge but that wasn't much used even then.

Virgin XC used to have a route from Liverpool Lime street to Southampton (and beyond) but the service was always over crowed and south of Crewe most often late so in order to stop the passenger outrage at the company they dropped the service altogether.
It runs from Manchester now and doesnt seem to be so over crowded as the trains are longer with less call of so many to Crewe etc.

There was an SO working from Wolverhampton to Penzance that was diesel hauled throughout, routed via Bescot to arrive at New St facing West so avoiding reversal, and a SO Birmingham - Llandudno routed via Bescot to Wolverhampton and electric hauled.

On summer Saturdays in 1989 the 09.40 Poole to Liverpool followed the following route through the Midlands: Leamington Spa - Coventry - Stechford - direct line to Aston - Bescot - Bushbury Junction and then to Crewe. This train left Coventry a few minutes after the 08.55 Eastbourne - Glasgow/Edinburgh, (which followed the conventional route through Birmingham New Street and Wolverhampton) but reached Crewe about twenty minutes ahead of the Glasgow/Edinburgh train.

On the subject of routes through Birmingham avoiding New Street station on summer Saturdays the attached photograph shows a Paignton - Newcastle train crossing a Glasgow - Newquay train at St Andrews Junction, Birmingham in September 1989.