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which Class do you most miss from today's mainline running


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1) Brush type 4 (class 47) They always my top of the loco list.

2) All of the Peaks (44,45 and 46)

3) Westerns D10xx (Class 52)  I never did get these locos running at full thottle, as I lived in the wrong part of the conntry.

4) Warships and Hymeks to finish the list of.

 

Terry.

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I miss diesel shunters loose shunting and sorting rafts of wagons,  the driver would  just nudge ( half a wheel turn of the 08) and a raft would trundle away into a fan of sidings,  it was a test of skill too, too much momentum and  the  wagons would hit the buffer stops,.  Use to watch this shuntiung at the Hexthorpe Gulley  At Doncaster

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Having become interested in railways in 1966 and living in Cornwall, it's any and all hydraulics for me, but particularly the Western Class 52s.

And especially those full-bore standing starts at the 1 in 60 up to Highertown Tunnel out of Truro's platform 2.

 

Here's a driver enjoying his job! Imagine those twin Maybachs roaring..............Western Glory, yes indeed!!

 

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Hymeks - bet they'd have been dragging welsh coal around until it stopped being mined if BR hadn't prematurely cut their service.

 

Then, someone in the 00s would have re-engined like the 73s, space for ETH and everything else - and they'd be glorious on the west highland way.

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12 minutes ago, Davexoc said:

A pair of 43s, Valenta fitted of course, and departing at full bore. The remaining crop don't have the same presence.....

Or smoke!

 

I thought they were turbine-engined when I was younger, partly from the turbo noise but also because I knew APT prototype had a turbine.

 

They'll always be 253s to me.  I saw every last one of them (none had yet been written off, in the early 80s).

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So many favourites to choose from really, all very much missed, but for me it has to come down to the Westerns, almost fifty years after I saw one for the first time I'm still enthralled by them on so many levels. The looks, the thought process and engineering that went into their design and the sound those twin Maybach MD655s, fantastic stuff. Seeing four of five of them idling away on the blocks at Padd or a single example cooling down under that smart roof at Penzance, the memories abound and never fade. Seeing and hearing a dozen or more dotted around the table and servicing shed at Old Oak or roaring and growling like an angry bulldog away from a signal stop at Bodmin Road on a wet Winter afternoon with the up milk. Every photo, slide, book and dvd I own of these fine machines takes me back to the 1971- 77 period in a flash. I've done a few of the mainline tours with D1015 including an unforgettable cabride on one of them between Exeter and Plymouth and I still can't get enough, imagine how jealous I was when one of my mates at work was chosen to be trained on it to work freights with GBRf a few years ago…!

 

 

 

 

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Spot on Rugd1022. As a lad on holiday with my parents and  the elderly relatives from London (all of whom travelled to Dawlish by train) I used to love trips to The Beach Hotel on Marine Parade.

 

 I used to sit in the bay window of whatever room we had or stand outside the Kennaway tunnel portal at Dawlish, and the sound of a Western blasting out the tunnel up country accompanied by a tuneful toot on the Desilux horns, with a string of 6 wheeled milk tanks on the back was always a highlight in my memory.  

 

There was also always something about the polarised glass on the cab front which made one side look blue, the other pinkish on the cant of the curve at the Langstone Rock.  

 

Mind you, the peaks used to make the rails sing about 5 minutes before a train ever came in sight there, and they certainly had presence.

 

The 25s on 4 and 5 coach locals made a bloody good throb pulling out of the down station loop at the Warren too.

 

Happy days in the 70s.

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On 21/02/2020 at 20:09, adb968008 said:

If Foster Yeoman had assembled a fleet of class 52’s the whole history of UK railways could have been different, alas the unions saved the few but cost Britain most of its locomotive industry, and several BR works.


As it’s been stated on several threads on RMWeb, Foster Yeoman ordered the Class 59’s because of the poor availability of the Class 56’s and BR had nothing that could come close.  Also, the main reason the Class 52’s were withdrawn, though superior to a lot of other loco’s, BR was reliant on spares from West Germany, their high cost and BR internal politics.

 

Loco building in the UK effectively died in the 1960’s, though the Class 56’s, 58’s, 60’s, 90’s and 91’s (336 loco’s) were built in the mid 70’s to early 90’s.  A drop in the ocean compared to the past.

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