Carlisle - Hellifield inspection saloon, summer 1992

[Wheatley]

On Sunday 28th June 1992 45596 Bahamas took a railtour from Keighley to Carlisle and back, and managed to set fire to most of the S&C in the process. It was a busy couple of days for me, I was two months into my new post as RRNE Operating Supervisor Appleby (at the age of 23!) and I spent that Sunday following the train in a van putting out some of the smaller lineside fires whilst the PWay and retained firefighters from most of the fire stations  en route dealt with the rest. Bahamas came back south behind a deisel in disgrace ("making light chuffing noises" as Control put it); I was verbally abused at Appleby by a photographer because the deisel was spoiling his shot, I spent most of the Monday typing up fire reports after losing an argument with the Ops Clerk at Leeds as to whether I was to fill in 46 separate fire reports with the same engine number on them or one fire report with 46 different mileages listed, and I got a strip torn off me for not cancelling it the day before because it hadn't rained for three weeks. My explanation that I didn't know I could fell on deaf ears. 

 

https://www.sixbellsjunction.co.uk/90s/920628wv.htm

 

Anyway. A couple of weeks later an inspection saloon ran for the benefit of some gentlemen from BRT who wished to inspect the charred remains of their lineside telephone network, and the damage to the BT pole route which ran alongside the line near Horton in Ribblesdale. I was on the platform shamelessly gricing when it arrived at Appleby, and was somewhat alarmed and surprised when an LM District Inspector alighted, informed me I was relieving him, gave me literally a five minute lesson on how to be a guard and then jumped on a northbound Sprinter and went home. Apparently LM practice at the time was that Operating Department inspectors acted as guards on inspection saloons. 

 

Fortunately my bacon was saved by a Skipton guard who turned up with the relief driver at that point, RRNE (ex- ER) taking the far more sensible view that guards guarded and inspectors/supervisors inspected and supervised. I'd been invited onto the saloon for lunch by this point and it would have been rude to back out, so I and the lookout enjoyed our lunch, I left the saloon in the care of the guard and blagged a cab ride (for official route familiarisation purposes of course) with the driver as far as Hellifield. 

 

I didn't have a camera with me of course. Now I would have run my phone out of memory taking pics but back then, although there was always a camera in the 'On Call' bag in the van, I only usually carried it on me if I was wearing a coat with big pockets which that summer I mostly wasn't. 

 

So (at last) my question is this. Does anyone know which saloon and loco were involved please ? It would have been July 1992, the loco was a 31 in either Dutch or plain grey livery, and I think the LMS pattern saloon was either in Regional Railways or possibly Scotrail livery. 

 

I never did learn my lesson. Although I got plenty of shots of unusual workings over the next couple of years, I had no camera with me for two epic workings of scrap DMUs and 85s, no photos of the 156 which derailed at Culgaith or the Motherwell 75t crane which rerailed it (Kingmoor having carelessly broken theirs), very few photos of the embryonic desulpho-gypsum traffic to Kirby Thore and precious few photographs of the men I worked with, many of whom are no longer with us. If only...

Edited February 28 by Wheatley

[hmrspaul]

OK put me out of my misery what the h... is a RRNE ?

 

Please remember this is a forum for amateurs interested in railways, not for professional railway people. 

 

Paul

[Cruachan]

1 minute ago, hmrspaul said:

OK put me out of my misery what the h... is a RRNE ?

Regional Railways North East.

[Wheatley]

Apologies, what Cruachan said. The London Midland Region was I think the last region to go through Sectorisation.  The Settle &  Carlisle had been split between the LMR's Carlisle and Preston Divisions, later Areas, but was transferred to RRNE on 1/4/92 along with Settle Jcn - Carnforth, presumably because the only remaining regular services went to Leeds. The other local services from Carlisle around the Cumbrian Coast transferred to RRNW the same day, with the rest of former Area Manager Carlisle's organisation becoming part of Intercity. 

[bécasse]

RRNE = Regional Railways North East and RRNW = Regional Railways North West, both being sub-sectors of the Provincial or Regional Railways Sector.

[Cruachan]

I can't identify which specific saloon was in use that day unfortunately, but of the LMS design 50' saloons, 999503 (Built by BR to an LMS design) was the one that carried Regional Railways livery, and DM45020 was the one in Scotrail blue stripe colours.

 

For completeness, there was also a later BR mark 1 style saloon that carried Regional Railways livery, 999509, formerly an MOD Escort vehicle. 

[Wheatley]

Thank you. I suspect it was 999503, Newton Heath rings a bell. It definitely wasn't 999509, I'd remembered enough from Larkin "BR Departmental Rolling Stock" to identify the BR vehicles (2 end windows). 

[TheSignalEngineer]

We used 999503 to do the HMRI inspection of the Jewellery Line in 1995. That was in RR livery at the time. I used to have a photo of it on here but it disappeared in the great server meltdown. 

Edited March 1 by TheSignalEngineer