After the excellent day out on Wednesday and a break on Thursday, I decided to do a bit of 1973 stock hunting on the Piccadilly Line to begin with on Friday. So a quick trip down the Northern Line to spend 45mins on platform 5 of Kings Cross St. Pancras station. For the first 15 minutes or so I had the pleasure of an intermittent chat with the young lady station supervisor who was marshalling the regular passengers. I logged 36 individual units during my stay of which I needed 2. I now need 10 more for the set and it’s getting hard!
I had decided to move on at 10:30 and my next target was to spend some time at Harrow & Wealdstone. This would give me some freight action and a chance to pick up some of the new Avanti West Coast 805 units and also London Northwestern Railway’s 730’s. That plan of action went pretty well starting with 805013 on Euston and 730042 and ‘044 on Camden Carriage Sidings. Once I was at Harrow & Wealdstone, another 730 for the collection was 730035…
…on, I believe, a driver training run from Bletchley to Kilburn and back again.
Freight was sporadic with, like Wednesday, a number of cancellations but 66433 turned up on the Tescoliner and was a new one for me…
…And I was really pleased to find a Class 70 on the Lawley Street to Southampton intermodal…
…In this case, 70016 which was another new sighting. Getting a photo was a close run thing – you can see the rear of a northbound intermodal in the shot. A few seconds either way and I’d have been cursing my luck😅
My trip home was a convoluted one – down to Clapham junction, then into Waterloo, across to Waterloo East for a train to London Bridge. From London Bridge to Farringdon and onto the Elizabeth Line to Tottenham Court Road where I finally caught the Northern Line. If I’m lucky this can turn up some new haulage but in the end I only picked up 3 for the day. The tally of sightings was 209 logged of which I needed 19.
Saturday was an away trip to Chatham for Wingate & Finchley but to complicate things, the steam special was out and about again. This time it was running from Norwich to Canterbury West. I wanted to get some more photos and decided to pick up the diesel part of the trip at Highbury and Islington, making my way there via the Northern and Victoria Lines.
I got there with around 15mins to spare and while waiting on the platform heard another passenger of around my age asking a member of Underground staff if they new what time the steam special was coming through. The staff member apologised, saying he worked down below and had only come up for some air during his break – he was not aware of a special. I was able to interrupt with the information at that point as I had it on my mobile phone. I was expecting the special at around 09:30. A sad tale then came to light – the guy had travelled from Romford on the Wednesday to see the steam special but saw only the diesels. He assumed that the steam loco had been replaced. So he’d come to Highbury & Islington hoping for better luck. I had to appraise him of the fact that the special was diesel hauled as far as Willesden and he would once again not see the steamer here. I suggested that he take the Overground round to Denmark Hill where he could catch up with Britannia on the Willesden to Canterbury part of the run. I don’t know whether he was able to take my advice.
The special duly made its appearance shortly after with D1935 leading. An eastbound Overground service did try to get in on the action and obscure my view…
…but only succeeded in adding to my options when editing the shot😅 D1924 was bringing up the rear…
I was hoping from here to get over to Wandsworth Road and photograph Britannia again. I should have taken my own advice and boarded the Overground via Wapping but I had other ideas which routed me via central London. Long story short, I missed the special by around 5 minutes. Serves me right🤣 However, I did get to travel on a lot of different trains during my failed attempt and my subsequent journey on to Victoria to catch a train to Chatham for the football.
The game was a bit of a disappointment with Wingate & Finchley losing 1-0 in the FA Trophy against hosts Chatham Town and the photography was not good due to harsh sunlight and deep shadows which often caused the camera to choose advertising hoardings as its focus 🙄 In this shot that was less of an issue as I got a nice view of our bench watching the play as Matty strokes the ball back towards Billy…
After the match it was back to London on the first train although I chose to change at Bromley South to fit in another for haulage. The train tally for the day was better than the football – From 109 logged I wanted 3 and the new haulage count was a massive 11😎👍
Now we’re up to date!
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