Spotting 2025 – Weeks 31-33

After much of June and July passed me by it seems that a return to Football has given some renewed impetus to my activities. The first 3 games of our season were going to be very tough – Billericay away, Dulwich Hamlet at home and Cray Wanderers away. Fans predict that Billericay will win the league this season and we travelled there with a squad that has too many new faces and too little time together. The result was a 2-1 defeat and that really set the scene for the start of the season. The other matches were lost to a single goal as well. Here’s a shot of our skipper, Billy, getting physical in the opposition area at Cray…

…Yes, we have Pink away kit this season and it actually looks really good! The match at Cray was really disappointing because we fought back from 2-0 down to make it 2-2 but had 2 players sent off and Cray were able to steal a winner with a few minutes to go. It was one of those games where the Referee played a significant part in the result and, when you’re walking back to the station from an away match and a couple of the home supporters tell you that your side didn’t have the rub of the green you know that your belief that the Ref didn’t handle the match in an even-handed manner is correct…

Two away matches at least gave me some spotting opportunities – Billericay Town presented me with 720143 for the journey home…

…A totally new sighting!

Mixed in with the start of the football season was a trip to get some Class 455’s… Only it wasn’t because Thameslink was suffering from staff shortages and I decided to redirect my energies to Stratford. Only, when I got there at 10:40, I immediately realised that my train was the last to be moving for quite a while. Fire in the signal cables shut down the whole line at that instant and it wouldn’t get fully resolved until 14:10. I didn’t know that then but was able to check the details afterwards. My spotters instincts just kicked in and I hopped on the Docklands Light Railway down to Lewisham. Sympathy for the ordinary passengers stuck in the middle of that!

Lewisham proved to be much more active with a good selection of passenger and freight activity. I’m currently using a photo from Lewisham of 69011 for my photo pc desktop as shown on Clare’s Challenge. While enjoying a cup of the excellent coffee from the station’s Costa’s I got this pic of 66032 looking resplendent on the Tolworth to Cliffe Brett Marine empty aggregates…

From Lewisham I hitched a ride to Denmark Hill in the hope of photographing the Colnbrook Tanks – Fuel for Heathrow Airport – but that proved to be a train that didn’t run and hadn’t been cancelled on the system 🙄However, I did get to photo some of the 465 units like 465041…

…operating a Gravesend to Victoria service. Like the 455’s these are an endangered species although it’s uncertain exactly what Southeastern’s plans are or what trains would replace the ones that remain in service. Here’s 465013 using platform 3 at Denmark Hill…

…and shaking up the Buddleia 😅

I’ll be back to report on this week’s spotting in another post 😎👍