Spotting 2025 – Week 2

The first full week of the current year and it has been an active one despite freezing temperatures!

Tuesday 7th was my first outing and a trip that has become a sort of tradition at the start of a year. Pick up some freight on the North London Line then spotting at Stratford over the lunch period. This ‘shakedown’ generally picks up some new locos that have changed rosters over the holiday period. That said, even I didn’t expect what I got, 66137 passing through Canonbury with the Peterborough West Yard to Bow Depot ‘Plasmor’…

…This sighting drew a ‘Flag’ on the Trainlogger website! You see the loco has been sitting at Toton since September 2022 and appeared to have been be stored out of service. Fortunately, armed with a photograph showing the loco in pristine condition I was able to show that the loco is very much back in active use. Looks like it has had a full overhaul and been fitted with a new exhaust.

Stratford proved interesting more for what was happening than for passing freight. Just after I arrived, they started directing east bound passengers over to platform 10A – you know, the platform usually inhabited by myself, the pigeons and an occasional wayward passenger. Then they started announcing that platform 9 was closed. All London bound trains would use P10. So here’s 720131 on a London bound service from Colchester Town arriving in 10…

Platform 10 still had to handle the westbound freights – Here’s a Felixstowe North to Trafford Park intermodal hauled by 90010+90047 with 66596 hitching a lift…

To make matters worse, shortly after all the services to Meridian Water were cancelled due to a points failure – the last one to arrive being worked by 720124…

The platform 9 situation resolved in around an hour – just in time for me to catch a train back to Liverpool Street. I never found out the cause though I’d guess at signal or track circuit failure. Not sure when the Meridian Water points issue was fixed. It wasn’t a bad day out for me with 154 logged of which I needed 8. I also picked up 4 new for Haulage.

I spent Wednesday warming up from Tuesday 😅 Then Thursday dawned bright and sunny but with a heavy frost. My plan of action was to head out west to Ealing Broadway. After routing via New Southgate in the vain hope of picking up the last class 717 I need for haulage, I found a string of 3 Paddington terminating trains on the Elizabeth Line before the Reading train that would take me west. I decided to station hop in order to ride all three in the hope they might be new ones for haulage – They weren’t 🤣 But 345055 on the Reading run was and I rode that out to Southall, allowing me to check the Locomotive Services / West Coast Railways depot there and log no fewer than 4 of West Coast’s locos for the first time!

Back to Ealing Broadway and a quick check on Realtime Trains showed that most of the freights that should pass through weren’t running. Standing in the cold was becoming unpleasant – time to move. So I turned the photography day into a riding day. A short hop to West Ealing where GWR provided 165126 on the Greenford Donkey which I photographed at Greenford…

Then I rode back to Marylebone picking up a few of Chiltern’s units for sightings on the way. While I didn’t want either of these, here’s a photo of 168109 and 168111 at Marylebone with ‘109’s driver checking the lights before departing to Oxford…

That really sums up a riding Thursday – lots of movement but not much photography! I whipped out via Euston to Harrow & Wealdstone, had a chat with another ‘senior’ enthusiast and then headed home. Logged 185, saw 17 for the first time and got 7 new for haulage. That’s an impressive haul in the circumstances!

A quiet Friday, then off to the football at Chatham. At the moment we’d lose a game if the Referee was on our side so away to Chatham was always going to be a defeat. I don’t think the Ref was that bad – seemed to want to let the players maim each other while not giving anything against the home side. We will always believe we should have been given a penalty in the first half when we were leading 1-0. I’ll know for certain when I process the photos tomorrow😅 Either way we then shipped 3 goals to lose 3-1. Standing at the side of the pitch to shake hands with the players and hope that it will instil some belief feels like a futile gesture at present. Aren’t I lucky to have trains as a fallback to make me feel a bit better. I may have only logged 46, but I picked up 4 that I needed and 5 new for haulage! I still need to process the match photos but here’s the train shot of the day – 377510 arriving at Bromley South in the bitter weather on its way to Ashford…

..The headlight picks out the droplets of dew on, for London, a very cold night. Not as cold as some of you are used to but the whole of my face was feeling it by the time I got home.

Hope you all have a great week – More stories from the rails next week 😎👍