Express Ballast Rats

Having a wedding to attend on Saturday, plan A was to go to Toddington on Sunday and spend the day helping out with stripping down 2874 in readiness for a boiler lift before the end of the year.  As usual with my plans, the wheels fell off, though on this occasion in a good way.  Ben who had been rostered rostered himself to fire on Sunday was looking for somebody to take the turn from him as he had double booked himself.  The fact that the clocks would have gone back, giving the crew an extra hour in bed hadn't escaped my attention, so it seemed like a golden opportunity.  I accepted the offer.  Dinmore Manor was scheduled to be the steam loco for the day, when I arrived she had been parked over the old pit rather than on one of the new ones.  I'd have a bit further to go to collect the wood from the wood store etc, but no problem.

Dinmore Manor on the old pit

 Unlike my phone, the clocks at Toddington don't automagically correct themselves when the change from BST to GMT or vice-versa takes place

Apparently we should have gone nearly twenty minutes ago

 It seems to take a lot of people to make the change to the time.

Heaven knows how many it would take to change a light bulb

 My driver for the day was Steve, who spent much of the time apologising to any passengers that he could find about the state of the loco, which as you may remember had been deliberately dirtied up and then left uncleaned for a couple of photo charters this month.  Because of this, we had no cleaner assigned to us, which was a bit of a shame as they are quite useful at doing things like pulling forward coal, coupling and uncoupling etc.  The Pink timetable in operation gave at best a 35 minute break at Toddington, other than that it was three non-stop round trips of the whole line.

Steve apologising for the grubby state of Dinmore Manor

 These two were ex-BR(M) steam crew, but they seemed very happy with Dinmore Manor anyway.

Impressed with the GWR and GWSR.

 For October, the DMU was taking a break from services and being replaced by a mainline diesel, or as was the case on Sunday, two of them.  The classes 24 and 26 (affectionately known as "rats". I dread to think what the unaffectionate nicknames are) were out on a double header.

Crossing at Winchcombe

The class 26 was wearing express passenger headcodes for the occasion, though I'm sure that they were stopping at all stations. 

Sean was around for he first round trip, along with his son.  Sean spent most of his time heckling from the first carriage.  The way to deal with him I soon learned was to point my camera at him and he'd quickly duck his head back inside.

He wasn't always quick enough

Sean later emailed me a sound clip of a few minutes of the departure from Gotherington which I'm afraid I have no means to embed into the blog otherwise I would have done.

Later on, running around at Laverton

 Back at Toddington we crossed the "rats" again.  This time the class 24 was leading, hauling what was ostensibly a "Freight, engineering or ballast train with automatic brake not operative on all vehicles, or Light engine hauling one or more dead engines with automatic brake not operative on all engines." if the headlamp code was to be believed.

Personally I was sceptical about that.

 For the next round trip, we had a footplate passenger celebrating his 60th birthday.  It was a surprise that had been arranged for him by his family.

Happy birthday

 When we got down to Cheltenham, I had a slight mishap.  The procedure when uncoupling the non-steam braked locos from the stock is to first split the bags (disconnect the vacuum brake pipes), put the loco one back on its dummy and then get the driver to squeeze up the loco to the stock so that you can then go back in and unscrew the coupling etc.  Well I put the loco's vacuum pipe back on it's dummy and ducked down in order to get back out, when the vacuum pipe popped off of the dummy and clouted me on the top of my head.  A mild profanity may have been uttered under my breath at this point.  It didn't hurt much, but a quick feel with an ungloved hand revealed that I had a small cut and it was bleeding a bit.  Not to worry, I just carried on and finished doing the uncoupling as usual.  When I got back out, several people, including Nigel, the guard were looking rather concerned.  Head wounds, even trivial ones have a tendency to bleed profusely which was what had happened to me.  A quick visit to one of the toilets on the train to wash away the blood later and everything was fine again.  I discovered later that the sight of blood had caused one of the passengers to vomit on the platform. I'd prefer if at all possible to be the cause of attractive young ladies swooning on the platform rather than vomiting.  Heaven knows what Sean will say when he reads this. Nigel swiftly changed from showing mild concern to dreaming up titles for this blog post for me, none of which could possibly be used.  Mercifully there are no pictures.

As I suspect that our Operations Manager will read this, for his benefit, I did acquire an accident form and eventually decided that filling it in would cause me far more pain than the vacuum pipe had and after consultation with Steve, we decided that it wasn't appropriate to fill it in.  It really was "just a flesh wound".

Back to express passenger again

 The second photo charter was to run on Monday with an 08:00 start.  Martin was down as the fireman for the first shift and had turned up on Sunday to make sure that Dinmore Manor was put to bed with a slightly larger fire to keep her warmer overnight and make his job easier in the morning

Martin made himself useful by pulling some coal forward for me

 Steve's wife, Claudette hadn't been overly impressed by the fact that she was down to guard the diesel train.  The diesels have no steam heating apparatus, so the carriages would be quite cold, our train on the other hand was benefiting from plenty of steam heat.  Well the carriages were benefiting from steam heat, the cab was quite draughty when running tender first.

Steve was well wrapped up, but still noticing the cold.

 It didn't help that every time we passed the diesel, that Claudette leaned out and informed Steve how lovely and hot the hot water bottle was that she had fetched along for herself to compensate for the lack of steam heating.

Sometime during the last trip, an emergency was declared, the carriages were running very low on toilet paper.  Nigel phoned ahead from Cheltenham to Winchcombe requesting that extra supplies were to be made ready for collection.  Needless to say he cheekily offered me a roll to mop up the blood, regardless of the fact that my head had long since stopped bleeding and I was looking like my usual self again.  Not that looking my usual self was necessarily a good thing, but I was hoping that it would at least stop people vomiting on the platforms.  Well I lived in hope anyway.

Nigel offering me one of the toilet rolls

 Martin joined us for the last section from Toddington to Laverton and back and as Martin could do the firing, Steve very kindly allowed me to drive that trip.  Getting a steam locomotive to move is pretty easy really, getting it to stop is straight forward too.  Getting it to stop where you want it to is a whole different kettle of fish altogether.  There is a knack to it, one that I clearly don't have.

Putting Dinmore Manor to bed on the old pit

 Later on, I received an email from Dan, who had taken a break from his studies to pay a visit to the Autumn gala on the Mad Hints Mid Hants railway which 4270 was visiting.  When I checked them out, it explained why Ben had been so keen to lose the firing turn on Sunday. (The next three photos courtesy of Dan Wigg).

4270(r) and 1450 on the Mid Hants railway

 Brian, fresh from baby sitting 2807 on the NYMR was there too loking after 4270

Brian and 4270

 Ben was also on the baby sitting rota for 4270, though he seems to have got a bit lost and found himself in the cab of Raveningham Hall.

Ben on Raveningham Hall

Moving swiftly on to Monday, we had the second and last of the photo charters organised by Don Bishop.  By 08:00, everything was ready, Neil had managed to split the maroon rake whilst it had been in service on Sunday so that it was down to the required 4 carriages, Martin had her in steam in plenty of time for the 08:00 start, John was driving again and had her oiled up and ready to go.  Mike had appeared early enough to perform a repair to the ash pan door so that it could be closed properly and also to feed old video cassettes onto the fire during the runs past  to give a bit of colour to the exhaust.  Peter and Mel were ready to signal and guard respectively.  The sun was just rising into a largely clear blue sky, with just a few traces of clouds to be seen.  By the time that we got down to Winchcombe to try for the first shots of Dinmore Manor exiting Greet tunnel, the sky had turned to a solid grey mass of cloud, never to clear again for the reminder of the day.  Never mind, it still looks OK in black and white.

Usually when exiting Greet tunnel in the direction of Winchcombe, the loco will have shut off and there will be very little steam.  It's only on photo charters that you can arrange for steam to be on and get any kind of exhaust.

Leaving Greet tunnel

 We tried a few shots running into the rather attractive station at Winchcombe.  By now, Mike had experimented a bit and established that three video cassettes at a time launched into the fire has the desired effect as regards pepping up the exhaust.

Arriving at Winchcombe platform 2

 Next stop was Didbrook for a few runs past

Passing Didbrook

 At Didbrook, a few tantalising glimpses of small breaks in the cloud taunted us, but never quite came our way, or if they did, lasted for just a few seconds.  As luck would have it, no fewer than three such mini breaks arrived just late enough to illuminate the tail lamp as the train disappeared off up the track.

After an early lunch, to make the most of the forecast sunshine in the afternoon, we set off again with a fresh crew for a few shots departing Toddngton.

Departing Toddington

 Needless to say, the forecast afternoon sun was just a figment of the Met Office computer's imagination and it resolutely stayed overcast.

And again

 Later on down at Cheltenham, we found the brick laying gang making progress with resurrecting platform 2.  They said that we were a pleasant surprise, but we just ran around the stock and left them to it.  We didn't want to disturb their work more than was necessary.

Passing the brick layers....

...and the brick and mortar fetchers

 A few shots at Southam Rd bridge

I rather liked this one

 After Southam Rd, we headed off to Gotherington to try a few shots there.  I decided to try, but probably failed to be a bit more creative and took this from inside the shelter on the platform as Dinmore Manor passed by. 

Fisheye Manor

 Next stop Chicken Curve, for the sunset glint shot.... all we needed was the sun.

Still no joy.

 I decided to have a crack at a silhouette instead which seemed to work ok, even if I had to lie on the ground to get the angle right.  It's not art unless you have to suffer for it!

Dinmore Silhouette

 After that, the day was done and it was back to Toddington to put Dinmore Manor back to bed again.  Annoyingly I had forgotten my tripod as I had intended to grab a few after dark shots of the disposal process. 

Ben damps down 7820's ash pan

 I managed to perch my camera on the fence for long enough to grab a couple of long exposure shots anyway:

Dinmore Manor on the old pit after dark

And off again, before the exposure was over.

Many thanks indeed to John & Ben for driving. Martin and Tina for firing, Mike for making the smoke, Peter & David for signalling and especially to Mel who covered both guard shifts.

Finally, as many of you will know, Mark Clarke recently passed away after being taken ill whilst preparing the DMU for service a few weeks ago. His funeral was on Monday and there was a good turnout from the GWSR and CDRL. In all there were a dozen people from the railway supporting his son James and wife who are both volunteers on the Railway. The service closed with The Fireman's song by Don Bilston which all of GWSR/CDRL contingent agreed they’d be having at their funerals.