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'Peaks' on the Southern

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RichJF

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Hello everyone!

I have a micro OO gauge BR Blue layout (set in Southern England). I'm currently bidding on a Peak online & this has me curious...

Did the 'Peaks' (44/45/46) ever work regularly into the Southern Region as a whole? Were they restricted to passenger or freight workings?
 
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47421

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check out info for 1984/85/86. IIRC diagram for the Brighton was engine off the York-Portsmouth to New Street, light to Coventry to replace electric on Manchester Brighton. Booked a 47, but often a 45 from York. Usually replaced with a 47 for next leg, but sometimes did work the Brighton.
 

Western Sunset

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They worked regularly on the Northfleet coal trains to the cement works there (class 45s).

Can't think of any regular class 44 or class 46 workings.
 

D6130

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When I was a guard at Brighton, there was one week in the Summer of 1985 when I was on the middle Manchester turn every day from Monday to Friday, with two loco-hauled return trips from Brighton to East Croydon and back each day. On this particular week, the afternoon (to us) Manchester - Brighton produced a different 45/1 every day - instead of the booked 47/4 - and driven, of course, by "Saltley Seagulls" with a Norwood conductor driver. Unfortunately, I don't currently have access to my 1985 train log books, but the aforementioned website '1o76' will have full details.
 

Gloster

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Somewhere around 1975 I saw one at Poole on an Interregional, probably a 45, although that was definitely a rarity. In 1979 they also appeared very occasionally on Westbury stone trains through Salisbury, although I can only be definite about them being on ones that ran via Andover.
 

alistairlees

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They regularly appeared at Eastleigh in the mid 1980s on Speedlink workings from Severn Tunnel Junction.
45143 did a one-off Waterloo to Exeter SD in 1985, after the name was rededicated.
Apparently in the 1960s they went to Newhaven Marine on an overnight train from something like Glasgow.
I think a couple made it to Southampton or Poole in the 1980s on interregional workings
Whilst not the Southern, a few made it to Weymouth on workings from Bristol TM
And of course the already-mentioned Manchester - Brighton / Brighton - Wolverhampton turns.
 

Taunton

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They worked regularly on the Northfleet coal trains to the cement works there (class 45s).

Can't think of any regular class 44 or class 46 workings.
I remember seeing a Peak hauling this, by chance, midday at Sidcup in the late 1980s. Welbeck colliery, Mansfield, favoured origin; came Midland Main Line, Dudding Hill line, Kew East curve, Clapham Jc north side, South London Line, Lewisham, Dartford. Apparently very regular, possibly daily.
 

randyrippley

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According to a schoolmate in the early 1970's, Peaks sometimes worked the stone trains carrying new ballast to the engineering stockpile dump at Yeovil Junction in the late 1960's. He reckoned he saw his first Peak there around 1968
(Having said that, he also claimed a one-off class 40 at Westbury around the same time so believe what you will)
 

75A

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When I was a guard at Brighton, there was one week in the Summer of 1985 when I was on the middle Manchester turn every day from Monday to Friday, with two loco-hauled return trips from Brighton to East Croydon and back each day. On this particular week, the afternoon (to us) Manchester - Brighton produced a different 45/1 every day - instead of the booked 47/4 - and driven, of course, by "Saltley Seagulls" with a Norwood conductor driver. Unfortunately, I don't currently have access to my 1985 train log books, but the aforementioned website '1o76' will have full details.
In the 80's Brighton Top Link Drivers were trained on 47's and ran to and from Kensington Olympia, comically the Secondmen weren't trained on steam boilers so if one was 'on' it got turned off.
 

alistairlees

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Exeter Central is ‘southern’ and I have also seen peaks banking ballast trains up the incline from Exeter St David’s to Exeter Central.
 

Gloster

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Exeter Central is ‘southern’ and I have also seen peaks banking ballast trains up the incline from Exeter St David’s to Exeter Central.
Around 1981 Peaks could occasionally be used on trips to Exmouth Junction; I am not sure if they went to either Newcourt or Whimple. They may also have appeared on the Salisbury-Dinton trip on rare occasions.
 

Taunton

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Exeter Central is ‘southern’
Not since 1962. From the mid-1970s the WR hydraulics were pretty much all withdrawn, and a stud of Class 46 took over, based at Laira, on the "maid of all work" jobs that particularly the Warships used to do across the West Country. It needed to be specifically WR-based locos, because until the HSTs took over on Paddington to Bristol/South Wales, and a few years later to the Plymouth line, locos fitted with GWR-pattern AWS and based on the region needed to be used on these lines.
 

Gloster

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The last GWR AWS ramps seem to have removed in 1979, the same year that the HST started working two or three return workings to Plymouth and Penzance. (Or maybe it was January 1980 that they started).
 

RichJF

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I remember seeing a Peak hauling this, by chance, midday at Sidcup in the late 1980s. Welbeck colliery, Mansfield, favoured origin; came Midland Main Line, Dudding Hill line, Kew East curve, Clapham Jc north side, South London Line, Lewisham, Dartford. Apparently very regular, possibly daily.
This is the working I saw a picture of online which got me into the Peak question to start with.

Thanks to everyone for the great detail. Amazing how many visitor locos came to the region.
 

Peter Mugridge

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Not forgetting their use on railtours either... here we have 45 131 at Victoria.
 

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randyrippley

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Not since 1962. From the mid-1970s the WR hydraulics were pretty much all withdrawn, and a stud of Class 46 took over, based at Laira, on the "maid of all work" jobs that particularly the Warships used to do across the West Country. It needed to be specifically WR-based locos, because until the HSTs took over on Paddington to Bristol/South Wales, and a few years later to the Plymouth line, locos fitted with GWR-pattern AWS and based on the region needed to be used on these lines.

Not as simple as that - I spent a summer week in the early 70's on Dawlish sea wall and almost every other train seemed to have a Peak on it. Both 45 and 46, a lot not allocated to the WR. They were fitted with BR AWS and running on the WR without protection
 

70014IronDuke

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Just don't locate your layout on the "Withered Arm".

Something tells me a 139 tonne 1CO-Co1 would be allowed over Meldon Viaduct

:)
 

Taunton

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The last GWR AWS ramps seem to have removed in 1979, the same year that the HST started working two or three return workings to Plymouth and Penzance. (Or maybe it was January 1980 that they started).
Peaks had started working west of Bristol from the late 1960s as the hydraulics were withdrawn, firstly on passenger from Birmingham etc, then on freight and general WR internal services. The non-WR ones did not have the GWR AWS.

There was a fatal accident at Bridgwater in 1974, to an LMR Peak (No. 125), after which (I think with union pressure) every effort was made to use locos fitted with GWR AWS west of Bristol, which for Peaks was most (all?) of the Class 46, and Nos. D33-42, which from new had been allocated to Bristol Bath Road depot. A lot of Class 46 had been transferred to Laira as substitutes for the hydraulics, but the accident train, a Birmingham to Plymouth overnight freight, was running with a Class 45. The accident report, which came out the following year, lists the surprising amount of line which still had the GWR system at the time, although most WR allocated stock had been changed to dual system. Not those from other regions however. Disappointingly the accident report seems to home in on other aspects, and minimise the AWS issue, apart of course from saying that if it had been fitted the accident would be unlikely to have happened. In the main part of the report it says blandly that the line was fitted with "WRAWS" (which any WR man still called ATC at the time), and then several pages on that the loco was fitted with "BRAWS", it is left to the reader to notice the difference and make their conclusions.

As a onetime Southern question, they would have been used as general purpose Exeter locos, in particular heavy works and ballast trains beyond a Class 25, on any former Southern lines where they were not banned by virtue of weight or curving ability,. The latter is sometimes quoted as an issue for the 1Co-Co1 diesels, but if a GWR 28xx would go round, so would a Peak.
 
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CW2

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Back in the early 70s there was a Fridays Only overnight to (I believe) Portsmouth which used to get a Peak. It later ran light engine from Portsmouth to Cricklewood via Basingstoke, which is where us Reading-based spotters would go on a Saturday morning to cop it.
 

Cowley

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Just don't locate your layout on the "Withered Arm".

Something tells me a 139 tonne 1CO-Co1 would be allowed over Meldon Viaduct

:)

They were fairly frequent visitors to Meldon Quarry to pick ballast up and for a time the viaduct was used as a headshunt, not sure if the two things coincided though.
 

Peter Mugridge

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Nice. Sealed beam headlight too…
When did you take that photo Peter?
I forgot to put the date in even though it's there in my spreadsheet!!!

First picture taken at 15.05 and second picture at 15.25 on 28th December 1985.
 

Taunton

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They were fairly frequent visitors to Meldon Quarry to pick ballast up and for a time the viaduct was used as a headshunt, not sure if the two things coincided though.
46003 caught fire and was burned out at Crediton in 1978, possibly on one of these workings.
 

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Recollection, imperfect as it is without timetables to refer to, is that one of the freights from Severn Tunnel Junction, or possibly further afield, terminated and started back from Exeter Riverside. As the train ran in the night hours the loco, usually a Peak, was then available as a trip loco for the area. The ballast workings for Meldon were also a bit unbalanced: Monday and Tuesday would see empties coming back for refilling, Wednesday and Thursday would see the loaded ones heading out. This meant that one leg of the return working could be a light engine, which would also be available to be borrowed for anything needed.
 

D6130

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When I moved to Hampshire in September 1973, the Westbury-Fareham stone trains were booked for a 'Western' class 52, IIRC - with Westbury crews working throughout but, as more and more Westerns were withdrawn, Bath Road-allocated 46s started to appear from time to time.
 

ungreat

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I knew it was there somewhere!
 

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