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Devon Diesel Era Photo Record


Garry Morris
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Its always interesting to view comments on the various eras an liveries. One can almost guess the age of the writers by their preferences. BR was the bland time for me who worshipped at the altar of all things green which included both Swindon and Malachite. Then there was the sectors which looked like game boards; pick a pattern! After a fair start privatisation brought us a lot of patterns and squiggly lines and you didn't really know who was who or where they went. Finally TOCs appear to have come to their senses and hopefully a whole new set of liveries will follow the new GWR on to other railway companies.

 

Brian.

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A Class 45/0 is supposed to be amongst a number of diesels running onto the Dartmoor Railway from Barrow Hill on Saturday, in connection with their forthcoming 'Polar Express' operation. I have just arranged clearance for it, as it is a higher 'RA' than is normally permitted between Cowley Bridge Jct and Coleford Jct.

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A Class 45/0 is supposed to be amongst a number of diesels running onto the Dartmoor Railway from Barrow Hill on Saturday, in connection with their forthcoming 'Polar Express' operation. I have just arranged clearance for it, as it is a higher 'RA' than is normally permitted between Cowley Bridge Jct and Coleford Jct.

I remember we had class 45s regularly going to Meldon in the 1970s and 1980s.

I have looked in my old Freight Train Loads book and see the route is RA6 but a class 45/0 was RA7

there were published loads for class 45s to/from Meldon, so there must have been some routine dispensation back then,

 

cheers

Edited by Rivercider
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This is good news. I was talking to the duty manager at Okehampton a week or so ago and he told me that they had asked for 45060 three years in a row, and had been unlucky with it. He also said that 47701 and a 33 were due down.

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How it was! Not a 45 but the original named 46. There is a big 45 sign in the picture though as The Leicestershire and Derbyshire Yeomanry 46022 (D163) rolls out of Okehampton with a ballast train from Meldon (Feb or March 1980). Quality poor. I think it was a long lens hand held on a cold day in Okehampton light plus any other excuses that you can think of! Mermaids?

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How it was! Not a 45 but the original named 46. There is a big 45 sign in the picture though as The Leicestershire and Derbyshire Yeomanry 46022 (D163) rolls out of Okehampton with a ballast train from Meldon (Feb or March 1980). Quality poor. I think it was a long lens hand held on a cold day in Okehampton light plus any other excuses that you can think of! Mermaids?

Though Meldon did load mermaids sometimes, those wagons are not mermaids.

The first one wagon has two doors per side so may be a lamprey, the second wagon has three doors per side and looks like a grampus,

 

cheers

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The last shot of the Cornish Riv. is a classic. Perfectly composed, stands up well against the likes of Ivo Peters and Eric Treacy. Thanks for sharing.

Many thanks. Dad would be very pleased to have that accolade. His cameras were never that sophisticated, so I have been pleased how many turned out well. He was a lot more considered in his shooting than I am and tried to choose his positioning and framing carefully. Mind you when he wasn't so clever with his composition, the resulting prints were chopped about with nail-scissors, leaving some rather odd shaped little photos!

 

I have found another Devon diesel or two or three - 

  • BR WR Warship class D821 Greyhound on empty carriage stock working at Starcross on 30.6.1967
  • BR D1062 Western Courier Paignton 31.7.1977
  • BR diesel railcar at Brixham - Summer 1962 - The tall youth standing under the WAY OUT sign is me! One of my sisters is beside me in a check skirt. I know these details will mean a lot to all you rail fans! The really scary thing is that there is a bearded bloke in the nearest passenger window that looks a lot like me about 8-9 years later!

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post-14351-0-65961700-1450796524_thumb.jpg

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Edited by phil_sutters
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An ebay purchase. No information at all but a scene from when life was less cluttered? Probably early 1960's before the Hymeks left the area. Maroon coaching stock with destination boards so probably a portion to be attached at Newton Abbot. Branchline headcode. What happened to Cadets?.The staff building (nearest) has since been demolished along with the Regent Cinema and I guess the electrified gas lamp has gone along with the red telephone boxes. Compare with the last picture, there may be other details. I like the porters bike next to GWR spear fencing!

post-12275-0-05974800-1453650769_thumb.jpg

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45139 (D109) 19.8.83 on the the 09.50 Manchester to Paignton SO passing Kingskerswell. Spotters of the day will know that Peak in the early 100's numbering were notoriously difficult to collect  in the Westcountry. Not sure if the new road to Torquay blights this view now. Kingskerswell survived Beeching and closed just after; must have been second thoughts and no opposition. Some very nice bullhead rail and detail of how to model vegetation on a disused platform!

post-12275-0-57494400-1453732029_thumb.jpg

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This was a cheap ebay purchase in very poor condition. 'D6336 Plymouth' was all the information given. At a guess I think it's taken from the Tamar Bridge. The headcode is 6C18. In the background to the right is the line of the narrow gauge armaments storage railway? A line which has very little photographic evidence. I am puzzled as to where on the old SR line would produce 11 vent vans for a trip working? Lydford perhaps? The up line looks to be in very good fettle with concrete sleepers. Confusingly when the line closed beyond Bere Alston and before the track was singled the up line became the down line and vice versa - a signalman's nightmare! I am not good with colours but if anyone can do better with this please do, it's a rare location and a nicely framed shot which deserves a wider audience.

post-12275-0-03325800-1453928219_thumb.jpg

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This was a cheap ebay purchase in very poor condition. 'D6336 Plymouth' was all the information given. At a guess I think it's taken from the Tamar Bridge. The headcode is 6C18. In the background to the right is the line of the narrow gauge armaments storage railway? A line which has very little photographic evidence. I am puzzled as to where on the old SR line would produce 11 vent vans for a trip working? Lydford perhaps? The up line looks to be in very good fettle with concrete sleepers. Confusingly when the line closed beyond Bere Alston and before the track was singled the up line became the down line and vice versa - a signalman's nightmare! I am not good with colours but if anyone can do better with this please do, it's a rare location and a nicely framed shot which deserves a wider audience.

I'd say it was coming from the RN depot at Ernesettle; indeed, I'd go further and say the photo was taken just after the train had departed from there, as there looks to be part of the internal narrow-gauge line visible in the top right corner.

Here's a link to a Google Earth photo:- the narrow-gauge line is now a roadway:-

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Ernesettle,+Plymouth+PL5/@50.4096524,-4.1994313,298m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x486c9294a2882c0b:0xe684be2ff3990ac6?hl=en

Edited by Fat Controller
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Hi,

 

I'm not sure if this is any better, but you can always do the cheap trick for poor colour photos, convert to black and white...

 

 

post-18971-0-55555700-1453929926.jpg

 

Although I have Photoshop, and other editing software, For a quick fix, you can't beat IrfanView  http://www.irfanview.com/ download it, for free with all the plugins.

 

I suggest you play with the software for a while, you will find you will easily be able to convert colours, crop, add copyrights, whatever, and may well be able to use the batch processing features if you have a number of images with similar problems. I use it as my 'go to' quick fix software for web purposes. If you are into photos, then you owe it to yourself to get the hang of it.

 

A few seconds to adjust gamma and contrast, and resize. Best not to work with jpegs, but good enough for web.

 

Do you scan in the slides/photos, or get to digital in some other way?

 

Best wishes,

 

Ray

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