Spotting 2024 – Week 15

This week I was able to carry out two dedicated trips despite having a Tuesday night football match to attend and photograph. The outings were spread apart by the other duties between and it’s fair to say that neither turned out to be entirely successful in terms of the goals I initially set.

Monday was a day of train driver industrial action which meant that most services south of the river and the associated Thameslink routes were out of action. With this in mind I had decided to make this a ‘Tube’ day – a day out on the London Underground. I had a couple of targets in mind for my Freedom Pass Project – Chesham and Stanmore. Both of these are in northwest London but require a trip into central London to connect with the Metropolitan and Jubilee Lines. I also wanted to take another swing at logging Piccadilly Line stock…

So, I started out by getting the bus across to Arnos Grove where I picked up the Piccadilly Line into town. As usual, I was hoping to also get some new units for haulage, so I travelled Arnos Grove to Finsbury Park and then Victoria Line from there to King’s Cross St. Pancras where I headed up to the surface to catch a Metropolitan Line train. There was a Chesham train due in 11 mins. I decided to catch an earlier train as far as Wembley Park where I would wait for the Chesham.

Wembley Park is a meeting point for the Metropolitan and Jubilee – a shared stop. Here’s 96065 leading a Jubilee Line service for Stratford into the station…

…I just love the young lady in pink waving to the driver😀👍

It was here that I messed up… I forgot that the Chesham services are fast from here to Harrow-on-the-Hill – they use a different platform and I found myself wrong footed🤣 Chesham services are also not every few minutes like some other destinations. I decided to shelve Chesham for a while and head off to Stanmore – the northern terminus of the Jubilee Line…

It should be noted that I have been here before – prior to getting my freedom pass. In fact, it was an outing with Alasdair and we walked over to Hatch End via Bentley Priory. That was a very long walk for an 11 year old and included lunch in a well known pub called ‘The Case is Altered’ in Old Redding…

….But I digress. Back in Stanmore station and one of those shots that you can only get with a telephoto…

I travelled back to Wembley Park and checked for Chesham trains – nothing doing. So I took a Metropolitan train out to Harrow-on-the-Hill where I once more checked for a Chesham service. Nothing on the board. I do have patience and some would say it’s close to endless but in this instance I acknowledged that I could always go to Chesham another day. Instead I picked up an Uxbridge service because I wanted to see if I could identify some of the London Underground Schoma locomotives stored in Ruislip depot. Currently they are sitting in a siding beside the line near Ickenham and I travelled there to get a view.

Ickenham was showing signs of spring and I photographed Metropolitan line S8 stock unit 21080 arriving on an Uxbridge service while I waited for a train back to Rayners Lane…

Rayners Lane is where the Met and Piccadilly lines meet – here’s Piccadilly Line unit 160 arriving with a service to Uxbridge…

From Rayners Lane, I made my way down to Hammersmith on the Piccadilly and got myself a baguette for late lunch from Paul in the local shopping mall which I consumed while recording all the passing Piccadilly and District Line trains, picking up several of the former that I needed. Then it was home time. The day’s totals were 210 logged of which I needed 20 and I picked up 11 new for Haulage👍

I then had a football match on Tuesday, the photos to process and a family shop to do also. So my next planned trip was on Friday. However, in the interim I also purchased a Garmin Vivoactive 5 watch – I’m looking to expand the range of tools I have to help improve my fitness. Expect lots of walking, etc…

Friday’s trip was aimed at clearing out a couple of my Freedom Pass targets on the Southern – Tattenham Corner and Coulsdon South. This proved to be a bit of a traumatic experience for many passengers including myself although, as you know, I was able to let it all wash over me without any anxiety. After all, it’s not as if I have to be anywhere at a specific time!

It all started at New Southgate where my 09:55 train suddenly became delayed on the train display board… The info reported that it was delayed due to a faulty train. The implication was clear – the unit operating the service had broken down. One nice thing about modern trains is that quite often it is a software glitch that a reset can cure – It’s not like a melted fusible plug or a burnt whitemetal bearing like in Steam Days – the driver works through a procedure to shut down the train and then bring it back on line. So 717017 turned up looking a little bashful around 15 mins late.

The plan from here was to change at Finsbury Park for a trip down to London Bridge. But this also was fraught – There had been an earlier train failure in the ‘core section’ between King’s Cross and Blackfriars causing delays southbound and to complicate matters further there was a signal failure on the northbound side as well! I counted no fewer than 6 Thameslink trains waiting between Blackfriars and London Bridge for their turn to travel north! The knock on effect of these failures would be felt throughout the rest of my day. A comedian called Jimmy Cricket had a catch phrase- “And there’s more”… Well, there’s more but we’ll get to that later… Suffice to say for now that the trip to London Bridge was slow.

At London Bridge, it was relief to go to the Southern platforms and catch my train to Tattenham Corner. The service is operated by class 377 units and divides at Purley where the front unit goes on to Caterham and the rear one goes to Tattenham Corner. On my trip I was blessed with the doyen of the class for the outbound trip, 377101…

…It’s amazing to think that this unit is already 22 years old!

Tattenham Corner is one of two stations that serves Epsom Racecourse and was the preferred way for our late Queen Elizabeth II to arrive at the races. You can get a view of the course by walking up onto a grassy hill just 100m from the station…

I travelled back to Purley with the intent of getting a train down to Coulsdon South but I found that the ongoing Thameslink issues in central London were playing out here too – every stopping Thameslink service was cancelled meaning passengers would have to fit into the Southern services and the ones going to Coulsdon South were very busy as were the ones from Reigate in the London bound direction. I took a couple of photos like this one of 377205…

…before choosing to return to London Bridge on one of the trains from Tattenham Corner. By the time I got back to London Bridge, things had become decidedly worse. There was a systems failure of the signalling system affecting services into Charing Cross – It seems someone had been watering the Gremlins🤣 Fortunately, it became apparent that actually it was a points failure which meant that 3 of Charing Cross’ platforms could not be accessed. Some trains could still get through but others were being diverted into Cannon Street. However, the effect on the service is adequately illustrated by this shot of passengers waiting for a Hastings service…

…You might expect crowds like that in the rush hour but not at 14:30😒

Not wanting to brave the ongoing Thameslink signalling issue, I did manage to get a train going to Charing Cross and I took that as far as Waterloo East. I was going to do a quick log of the units sitting in the platforms of Waterloo itself before heading home. I couldn’t believe it – They also had an issue! Points failure affecting services through Wimbledon. I was glad that the self contained Waterloo & City line would carry me to Bank where I could get a smoothly operating Northern Line train home! Over the course of the day I logged 148 of which I needed 8. I picked up 6 new for Haulage👍

And, as if Friday wasn’t enough – Today, while I was happily watching Wingate & Finchley, the Signalling system for Waterloo to Wimbledon broke down to the extent that South West Trains were advising passengers not to travel! What a way to run a railway🙄