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Been making the most of a couple of free weekends to get out and see some decent diesel action with the annual 'leafbusting' trains





New Hitachi 800 class have reached the Hereford services now.

MattW wrote: ↑

17:14 Sunday 28th October 2018

Been making the most of a couple of free weekends to get out and see some decent diesel action with the annual 'leafbusting' trains

Thanks Matt, super shot with the signal box and hills in sunlight as a backdrop. I saw one of the 'Sandite' trains waiting in Shrub Hill yard last Friday morning with a very dirty class 56 on the lead end, but didn't have my camera with me.

The North Cotswold Line seems to be suffering from too many infrastructure problems of late with such reasons as track circuit failure, points failure, signal failure, and track safety issues according to Realtimes Trains website. Then there are the sad suicides, bird strikes, cattle on the line, bridge strikes and latterly a spate of overhead wire problems in the Slough area which has impacted on all Paddington services. The uncomfortable new Hitachi 800s are still having a number of niggling problems and a 9 car set was reported as limping into Worcester yesterday on 3 engines (instead of 5) - losing time in a big way and delaying trains in the opposite direction trying to clear the single line sections on our creaking 'main line'!

Cheers Tim. I could do with darkening the sun in those shots really but I don't have a program on my computer to do it yet. Seems they're trying to bring in these high-tech trains without thinking about what they're actually going to run them on!

Driver of the 66 told me next Sunday is the last run for this year.

Last scheduled trip for this year was back to two 56s - very noisy! Seen here in nasty drizzle at Colwall.