Saturday 31/05/80
86246 0915 Euston – Kingmoor
86246 1430 Kingmoor – Euston via Birmingham New Street
45138 2120 Euston – Leicester via Bletchley, Bedford
Another trip with the trolley to Carlisle for National Express Coaches, although this time my luck ran out with the motive power – 86246 all the way there and back again. St Pancras was shut all weekend for remodelling, so once I’d booked off duty I sampled the unusual haulage of a 45/1 out of Euston, on a diverted and retimed 2016 St Pancras to Sheffield.
Monday 31/05/82
Pope John Paul 2 was due to address the masses in Heaton Park on a Bank Holiday Monday. There were special trains arranged from all over the North West of England to Manchester Victoria, from where there was a frequent DMU shuttle to the Pontifications at Heaton Park. All of this threw up another problem – for the non-Catholic majority, Spring Bank Holiday Monday was when you unpacked the bucket and spades and took the family to Blackpool for a day at the seaside. Every Spring Bank Holiday the Manchester to Blackpool service was increased to half-hourly all day. The problem was that all the spare DMUs were shuttling the faithful to see the Pope, so the entire high-frequency Manchester to Blackpool service had to be loco hauled instead!
We had arrived at Bolton off the special nun-charter from Barrow at some awful hour of the morning, and all attempts at doing the ECS forward to Manchester were firmly rebuffed. (There were lots of senior managers around, and an enhanced security presence). So the four of us settled down to an uncomfortable overnight in the waiting room at Bolton station, punctuated by the sound of class 40s whistling through on various ECS workings, and the unremitting gurgling of the cisterns in the Ladies Toilets.
Come the morning, it all started well, with the first train of the day being my machine:
40069 0717 Bolton – Manchester Victoria
I then took 47564 back to Bolton on the 0750 Manchester – Glasgow to cover the 0710 from Blackpool, which would get me to Victoria nicely in time for 40069’s next working at 0945. Nice theory – but no plan ever survives the first contact with reality. The 0710 from Blackpool was 47485, which managed to stagger as far as Chorley before expiring. Eventually it arrived Bolton 40 minutes late being propelled by 40183, and terminated there. Well, that’s one duff out of the way, but the timetable is already in shreds. The next train was the 0740 from Blackpool with 47461, which had been diverted via Wigan around failed 47485. I turned that down and festered at Bolton a little longer. The following train from Blackpool was the 0810, which was 40052. That failed at Preston, and was replaced by 25189. So in summary the Blackpool departures so far were:
0610 40069
0640 [Not Recorded]
0710 47485 – failed Chorley, assisted by 40183, terminated Bolton
0740 47461 late, diverted via Wigan reaction 47485 failure
0810 40052 failed Preston, replaced by 25189
Thankfully after that the service settled down to some semblance of normality:
40069 1004 Bolton Blackpool North
My machine was making some very odd noises, and after working back to Manchester Victoria it too was taken off diagram for repairs. The locos were dropping like flies.
40077 1110 Blackpool North – Kirkham & Wesham
40183 1134 Kirkham & Wesham – Poulton le Fylde
40129 1150 Poulton le Fylde – Bolton
40129 was evidently a very sickly loco, with appalling lurches and a thick black exhaust, as was to become apparent a little later in the day …
40094 1304 Bolton – Blackpool North
25189 1410 Blackpool North – Kirkham & Wesham
40162 1429 Kirkham & Wesham – Blackpool North
40094 1510 Blackpool North – Manchester Victoria
40183 1645 Manchester Victoria – Preston
40020 1741 Preston – Bolton
At Bolton I bumped into a few other cranks, and our small band of 5 formed the only passengers for:
40129 1857 Bolton – Barrow
This was the return working of last night’s nun-ex. All the good Catholic folk had got back from the open air mass to Bolton station much faster than expected, so Control had arranged a special to run 3½ hours earlier to get them all back to Barrow. Somehow it didn’t occur to them that this 1857 train could now be cancelled, so we had the train to ourselves. There were just two of us stayed on beyond Preston, but at Lancaster we picked up the path of a service DMU, complete with Paytrain guard and passengers, and then set off calling all stations to Barrow. As I’d noted earlier, 40129 was not in the best state of health, and at Cark and Cartmel it decided to give up the ghost completely. It wasn’t responding to the power handle – it would either sulk and do nothing, or go from idle tickover to full power in an instant, then immediately overload. The driver declared it a failure, so the guard walked forward to the level crossing some distance ahead to telephone for assistance. Many of the passengers decided to adjourn to the pub adjacent to the station. After a considerable delay, the driver managed to regain power by isolating one pair of traction motors, and declared us fit to go. We rounded up the waifs and strays from the pub and herded them back onto the train, then the driver said “We’ve got another problem – we’ve got no guard – he’s walked forward to the crossing to report us a failure. Can you act as guard just till we pick him up?” So with me acting as unofficial train guard, off we went, slowly at first, then stopped at the crossing to pick up the (real) guard and report the changed circumstances to the signaller. Now considerably behind schedule, we carried on forward to Plumpton Junction, where 40170 was awaiting, having been sent out from Barrow to assist us. Assist us it duly did, being attached to the front, and then running in tandem through to Barrow, with a very vigorous performance.
40170 2142 Plumpton Jn – Barrow (in tandem with 40129)
Having departed Barrow the previous evening with disc headcode 40092, I was now arriving behind centre headcode 40170 and split box 40129, so one of each type at Barrow in 24 hours.
The only escape from Barrow was the last DMU of the day round the coast to Carlisle – which had been held specially to connect. I recall waking up at one of the intermediate stations to find the driver tending to the coolant system with a hosepipe and watering can. At Carlisle I was delighted to stumble onto a Roarer to take me back to London:
(Tuesday 01/06/82)
85013 0118 Carlisle – Euston
The day the Pope came to Manchester is one I’ve never forgotten: eight different 40s and a required 25, (and several other locos I missed) - non-stop all day action. It was a real-life gala day.
Friday 31/05/85
Another Carstairs portion mystery leap, this time scoring a required 27.
86248 1115 Glasgow Central – Carstairs
27066 1302 Carstairs – Edinburgh
47701 1400 Edinburgh – Glasgow QS (… to work, then …)
81018 2320 Glasgow Central – Carlisle
Saturday 31/05/86
One of the other controllers had taken note of my previous effort at getting a pair of 27s onto the Arbroath diagram, so he decided to do the same, just for the hell of it:
47716 1325 Glasgow QS – Stirling
DMU Stirling – Dunblane
27001 + 27008 1419 Dunblane – Glasgow QS
27008 + 27001 1603 Glasgow QS – Dundee
27005 1830 Dundee – Haymarket
47711 2003 Haymarket – Glasgow QS
The driver on the 1603 from Queen Street was enthusiastic and a bit liberal in his interpretation of the speed limits. The pair of 27s were doing 103 mph approaching Gleneagles, when he put the brake in for the stop. We eventually came to a halt a good half mile past the platform. After the briefest of pauses we engaged reverse gear and thrashed back into the platform, still arriving several minutes early.
