Spotting… 2 Years on…

The 12th of February marked the end of my first 2 years of logging trains in my renewed involvement in the hobby. It has proved to be a great motivator for exercise and has also driven me to do some additional historical research that occasionally makes it into my blog posts here.

2 Years down the road and what have we achieved? Well, I’ve seen every active member of 15 classes. For example, all the 222’s…

…Alasdair rides these every other week when he disappears off to Leicester to spend time with his young lady. I, on the other hand, really need to do some travelling on them before they get retired.

Of course, I’ve ridden on all of the Class 378’s…

…But I think you already knew that🤣 I understand that they will be undergoing a major refreshment programme, so I expect there’ll be lots of Class 710 activity over the next couple of years on what is now the Mildmay Line😎👍

The 378’s are only one variant of the very successful Electrostar unit classes. Of the others, there may be only 36 of them but the Southeastern’s 376’s took me until the middle of 2024 to complete the set…

…And continuing with the Electrostars… Whilst, compared with my friends up country, I have easy access to the Southern region and all the multitude of units that work there exclusively. Somehow 377446 is still avoiding me but I’ve got the other 238 of the class!.

I find that many ‘Spotters’ still view locomotives as being the gold standard despite the modern railway being very much built around units to deliver passengers to their destinations.

So… In 2 years I have knocked off over 70% of the current standard freight locomotive, the Class 66…

…That seems to be pretty good going if the chats I have with fellow enthusiasts on Bluesky are anything to go by. But it’s getting more difficult by the week to get new sightings. I think it’s time for more visits to places further afield. I will need to do that for other passenger operators and their units too.

I have, of course, seen all the units operating the Great Northern, Thameslink and Elizabeth Line. I’m amazed that one of the Class 717’s…

…that do the Great Northern run into Moorgate is still evading me for haulage, 717006! 🤣 And I’m diligently picking off the Thameslink 700’s and the Elizabeth Line 345’s as the days go by.

There are a number of other classes that hang by the thread of a single member evading being seen or ridden on. The Class 159’s on the Waterloo to Exeter services for example…

…Where 002 was still outstanding.

I’m very close to completing all the units on the London Underground with the numbers required on most lines down to single digits. Most frustrating is the 1995 stock…

…on my local Northern Line: Just 51591 and ’92 continue to evade me.

I hope this has given a flavour of the first two years of my current Spotting. Next post will cover 2025’s week 8 activities.