TRACTION 239

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TRACTION 239 will be on sale from Friday 7th April

 

Welcome to the May/June edition of TRACTION. I recently took the opportunity to travel on one of Arriva Trains Wales’ locomotive hauled services between Chester and Holyhead. It’s an experience that comes along all too rarely these days for the enthusiast. To hear a powerful diesel locomotive accelerate your train away from a station stop is a real treat. So, why not investigate the possibilities of locomotive haulage around Britain this summer?

 

Harking back to the days of locomotive haulage on the Waterloo to Exeter line, Jon Littlewood’s article ‘PERFORMANCE SURVEY: YEOVIL TO HONITON – THE TYPE 4 YEARS’ evokes the memories of those long gone days. Today’s Class 159 DMUs may be more operationally efficient than a ‘47’ or a ‘50’ on Mark 2s but do rather lack the charisma!

 

Alex Fisher continues his series of articles about ‘the first of the class’ with ‘D833, A LOCO HISTORY’. The first of North British built ‘Warships’, Panther, is the subject of this article.

 

A type of locomotive that is currently returning to hauling passenger trains is, of course, the Class 73. However I doubt that Martin Axford, when he was ‘PHOTOGRAPHING CLASS 73s ON THE CHANNEL ISLANDS BOAT TRAINS’, would have ever imagined that some of the ‘73s’ would be hauling sleeping car trains in the Scottish Highlands thirty or so years later.

 

David J. Hayes returns with the second part of his article about the ‘ALBION G.O.D.’ oil terminal in the West Midlands. This time he looks at traffic from the late 1970s until the 1990s.

 

The line to Kyle of Lochalsh has long fascinated readers but few have had the opportunity that Richard Maclennan had to travel in the cab of a Class 26, which he describes in ‘FROM MORAY FIRTH TO ATLANTIC WILD’

 

‘LEEDS HOLBECK DEPOT’ has a long history, first as a steam shed, then rebuilt as a major diesel depot and now in use for track maintenance vehicles and DMU servicing. Gavin Morrison paid many visits to the depot in the diesel era and his selection of photographs shows its changing face over the years.

 

French railways have a long tradition of powerful electric locomotives, many of which fascinated Colin Boocock. In ‘THE WEIRD AND NOT SO WONDERFUL’ he looks at a selection of these intriguing types that were to be found across The Channel.

 

Industrial locomotives don’t often get much attention from enthusiasts but they were (and in some places still are) a vital part of railway operations. David Ratcliffe redresses the balance with his feature ‘RUSTON & HORNSBY INDUSTRIALS’.

 

TRACTION MODELLING features two widely differing scales. David Aldridge’s ‘LODBOURNE YARD’ is a large O Scale layout with an interesting operational scenario. At the opposite end of the size spectrum Andy Gibbs shows how he built the Motorail car loading terminal building for his N Scale layout ‘KENSINGTON OLYMPIA’.

 

 

TRACTION 240 will be on sale Friday 18th May.