Jump to content
 
  • entries
    14
  • comments
    40
  • views
    9,089

About this blog

Analysis of latter day Waverley Route traction

Entries in this blog

Doing the Maths, Part I: Some Diesel stats for the Waverley Route

An update on my life mission, which is a work-in-progress, to grip the true flavour of the WR's diesel era.   Part One, the Last Summer and Twilight: May '68 - Jan '69.   CLASS 17. Roughly half the class worked over the WR, principally by virtue of 64B's substantial allocation, for some time the largest at a single shed. Although their WR heyday (1966-67) was behind them by this time, they were prolific performers and usually worked in pairs, and I'm judging their numerous trips to make
'CHARD

'CHARD

2

Twin Peaks, or a tale of BR/Sulzer sixteen-wheelers to ride the WR rails...

Don't be fooled, this is a simple summary of Peaks to scale the two summits of the Waverley Route during the seven or so years of their dominance 1962-1968.   What we have here is the makings of a database, to which I will return occasionally to finesse and elaborate on the detail.   Anyway, Peaks were the staple motive power for the up and down Waverley class 1s, they filled in on secondary services (albeit not as much as many of the published works seem to suggest; that accolade seems more
'CHARD

'CHARD

1

Who's that girl? - trying to i.d the blue Type 3 on the 0658 Hawick - Waverley

As David Cross says in the caption in Last Years of the Waverley Route, pictures of EE Type 3s on the WR are extremely rare. Since Stuart's post above on Waverley Route new image links I've still only come up with these four:   i. the latest published one - unidentified early BFYE at Stow on the 0658 Hawick - Edinburgh ii. D6838 - GSYP at Whitrope (on Railscot and featured on the WR picture links thread) iii. unidentified FYE body colour not known on up class 4 at Steele Road (published, ca
'CHARD

'CHARD

4

Cheviot Claytons - heirs to the K3s.....

LOL! Couldn't resist, and there'll no doubt be a Facebook campaign to have me exiled to some railless British region just for the sheer temerity of that comparison... Well the Borders will do just fine, ta - its natural majesty is still there to be inhaled, even if its diesel denizens and hill-climbing 2-6-0 stalwarts exist only in spirit form.   Claytons were allocated to 64B from new; in summer 1966 Haymarket consolidated its position as the largest home depot for the would-be 'Standard Ty
'CHARD

'CHARD

1

64B Haymarket allocation snapshots: Januaries 1966 - 1969

January 1966, 64B had 90 main line diesels allocated, comprising:   Clayton Type 1 (34) BRCW Type 2 (20) EE Type 4 (19, max) Brush Type 4 (9, max) EE Type 5 (8, max)     January 1967, the fleet has grown to nearly its maximum size, 140 locos call 64B home:   Clayton Type 1 (47, max) - Haymarket had the largest single depot allocation of Claytons during the period 5/66 - 7/67 EE Type 1 (4) - at the time of 64B's largest ever allocation, 144 in May '67, this stood at 5 BR-Sulzer Typ
'CHARD

'CHARD

3

Napier nonsense: how to justify the unjustifiable

For completeness, the ScR Deltics can't really be missed out. You'd be expecting something very generic at this point, basically saying that if there was a Scottish regiment bolted to the side there'd be a 64B stencil on the nose. And you'd be wrong.   These eight were Haymarket's usual stable:   9000 9004 9006 9010 9013 9016 9019 9021         However, during October - December '67 it looked like this:   9001 9003 9004 9006 9009 9010 9013 9021   And from January - Ap
'CHARD

'CHARD

3

Smethwick's finest (other products of B66 available, that may or may not be considered quite this fine)

The first of what must be, in anyone's book, one of the most successful of the Pilot Scheme classes, if not the most successful Type 2 of all, entered service at Hornsey shed on 30th July 1958. An unbelievable 52 years on, it's hard to contextualise how this gritty progeny of the even grittier district of Smethwick marked the beginning of the revolution of suburban services out of Kings Cross. Curious too how this turned out to be something of a false dawn, because hard on the heels of the unb
'CHARD

'CHARD

3

Fruit Machine Jackpot

Well, after the hectic postings of yesterday and my knee-jerk reaction to EE Type 3 feedback, there seems to be an unprecedented level of traffic to my mindless number-crunching, so here goes with one particular Haymarket Best of... that I was dreading, Class 24s. And it turns out to be as benign an allocation history as it's possible to get.   Every oral history of Waverley dieselization makes great fanfare of the same classes: Peaks, EE Type 4s and 'BRCWs,' probably because they were the us
'CHARD

'CHARD

1

More marauding Celtic Co-Cos in the Central Belt

For completeness, here is some additional info about tractoring's infancy at the sixty-something depots, Polmadie having a massive early input but action concentrating on Eastfield in 1972. Obviously it's Celtic in the genealogical sense, not the football one, in which I have no interest and even less knowledge.   I'm keeping the Haymarket contingent in here - amazingly the drive to rid the Fife coalfield of steam meant that 64B started off as a major player. We barely associate HA with the
'CHARD

'CHARD

4

Lesser spotted Borders tractors

Possibly the least-photographed and recorded class based at 64B to feature in Waverley route (re)collections. A dozen strong for the majority of the Waverley's diesel era, the tractor fleet remains elusive, despite Neil Caplan attesting to their late mastery of the route in the Railway World WR Special (Ian Allan 1985).   However, there is probably a solid explanation for this. The Clayton fleet was still retained in quantity until inroads were made during '68, matched to a degree with ro
'CHARD

'CHARD

9

The 64B Nine - Brush with standardization

Some observers have pointed to the dying years of the route, when its life was literally ebbing away, as painfully exciting times, when nearly new Brush Type 4 locos (less than two years old when the writing was on the wall in February '67) and fellow Co-Co, EE Type 3s, made an impact. BR's 'Standard Type 4' certainly proved itself more than capable on the line's legendary climbs, perhaps even more so than the Peaks with which the line is inseparably associated in folklore. The locos concerned
'CHARD

'CHARD

0

19 x Sixteen Wheelers - Haymarket's Type 4 Homies

When I've got this entry down I can put the instructions to the central-heating boiler away, because the core details are written on the back of its warranty envelope - along with the addresses of some RMWebbers! - is that you???!!!!   Haymarket became synonymous with the EE Type 4 over two decades' faithful service, it received 19 examples from new. Displacing A4s and the like from the Aberdeen expresses was just one of their party-pieces. On the Waverley Route, they established themselves
'CHARD

'CHARD

7

The Magnificent (64B) Seven - BR Sulzer Type 2

Drafted-in to replace yet more steam on local colliery and branch trips, Haymarket got its first real taste of the Class 24's younger, bigger sisters in December '66 with the arrival of D7602-7608 from Barrow Hill.   These displacements followed their Clayton shedmates' transfer (effectively to the Millerhill subshed) by a couple of months, giving an instant north Derbyshire feel to Lothian freight. I can't even imagine what that might have been like.   D7602 D7603 D7604 D7605 D7606
'CHARD

'CHARD

0

Easing in gently: 64B choppers

For far longer than I'd care to mention, the grubby recesses of my existence have been dedicated to establishing what traction worked the Waverley Route. Obviously this process went warp-speed with photo-sharing sites and this forum literally opening up a new vista of data that, even five years ago, who'd have believed existed out there. Take a bow all you photographers and chroniclers of legend who kept hold of your collections, no matter how fragmented or ill-structured for 40-plus years, in
'CHARD

'CHARD

2
×
×
  • Create New...