From the guard's van

I have always had an interest in Bescot Yards... my father was based there for much of his working life and it was one of my favourite places to watch the trains, it being near to my school and not far from home. These shots are from the 1990s. Two class 20s head north along the bi directional road which goes behind the station.  Class 85 stands in the down yard with other locos including a class 90 undergoing repairs.  Hope it's not under the wires.  Class 37 enters the down yard from the north.  A class 58 stands next to the diesel depot.

Merehead and Whatley quarries are in Somerset and together they ship out huge quantities of stone by rail. These images were taken in the 1990s at both quarries.  Yeoman Quarries owned class 59 approaches the quarry with a train of empties.  Class 56 no 56 039 arrives at Merehead with a train of empty YEOMAN hoppers.  The locomotive maintenance area at Whatley quarry with shunting in progress. One of the ARC owned class 59s at the depot. 

These images are from the Bala Railway and were taken in the late 1980s. The loco is named Maid Marian. 

These pictures were taken while waiting for a train to Sheffield after attending a course at Luton Industrial College in the late 1980s. The trains illustrated are class 319s which are dual voltage units introduced to operate the Thameslink services between Luton and the South coast.  The recent introduction of new stock has made them redundant on this service so some have gone into store, it was suggested that a few have diesel engines added to make them bi-modal trains (and thus saving the Government the expense of electrifying routes) and the rest were to be sent to that graveyard for old London trains... the North of England (thus saving the Government the cost of new trains for the North... as usual). The latter are working some suburban services out of Manchester. The end doors were incorporated to enable evacuation of the trains if they failed in the tunnel sections through central London.

The wording on the end of the engineers observation coach reads - "Observation end"... thats the end with... the windows! That's a relief....

I recently made an unscheduled visit to Manchester Victoria station and, as I had not been there since the early 1990s, was surprised at the changes to the station. I remembered that I had spent time there just before the Bury third rail units were taken out of traffic and the following pictures are the ones taken on that occasion.  The units were based on the 1950/60 standard design of EMU but they ran off a side contact third rail.  Do you remember guard's vans and luggage space? A cropped version of this picture was published in the September 1990 edition of the Railway Magazine (page 621) with the following caption: "Preparation work for the Manchester Metro system is obvious in the foreground as a Bury train stands at the shortened platform 5 at Manchester Victoria Station on 27 June." Close up view of the unique side contact third rail.