Railway Video 28/9/2011 – Shortlands, Kensington Olympia, Wandsworth Road & Victoria

Yesterday was a fairly hectic day for me chasing across London after charter trains, steam positioning moves and freight.  To make it easier, I am posting the videos in the order they were filmed.

 

SR Battle of Britain Class 4-6-2 Steam Locomotive 34067 ‘Tangmere’ at the head of The Sussex Belle Charter from London Victoria to Hastings passing through Shortlands Station on the outward leg and arriving back at London Victoria on the return.  West Coast Railway Company Class 47 Diesel Locomotive 47500 is on the rear of the train.

Hanson Class 59 Diesel 59103 ‘Village of Mells’ passing through Wandsworth Road with a stone working.

DB Schenker (EWS) Class 92 Electric Locomotive 92037 ‘Sullivan’ working 4E32 Dollands Moor – Scunthorpe Empty Steel Wagons Northbound through Kensington Olympia.

A1 Peppercorn Class 4-6-2 Steam Locomtive 60163 ‘Tornado’ working 5Z63 Kidderminster – Stewarts Lane positioning move Southbound through Kensington Olympia.

 

Railway Photography – Acton Main Line

My latest trip took me to the West of London to a little station called Acton Main Line.  The station is located on the Great Western Mainline and is the first station out of London Paddington.  Train services are provided by First Great Western who operate a 30 minute service between London Paddington & Greenford, this is the only service that stops at the station and does not run on Sundays.

Passenger services passing the station are operated by First Great Western, Heathrow Connect and Heathrow Express.  Freight services are operated by EWS (DB Schenker), Freightliner, GB Railfreight & Hanson.

Acton Mainline is also host to a freight yard operated by EWS (DB Schenker) which is used by a large volume of stone trains serving the nearby terminal.  There is also a freight avoiding line that passes between platform 4 and the yard which is used by freight trains accessing/exiting the North London Line.

Stock Seen at Acton Main Line

Locomotives: Class 43 HST, Class 59 Diesel, Class 66 Diesel
Multiple Units: Class 165 DMU, Class 166 DMU, Class 180 DMU, Class 332 EMU, Class 360 EMU

Photographs

As usual, here is a little taster of the images I captured.  The full gallery of images can be found on my Photobucket site here.

First Great Western Class 43 HST 43037 passing Acton Mainline Station

DB Schenker Liveried Class 66 Diesel Locomotive 66152 at Acton MainLine Yard

A Skoda, Football Fans and a Shed

Two shifts for the price of one this week (Oh how I love overtime).

Friday

Pretty much an uneventful shift for once.  Once again working platforms 4-7 so should have been busy but, due to delays elsewhere, many of the trains we should have had were swapped to different parts of the station.  My Railway Enthusiast side reared it’s head as I made a quick dash over to platform 12 to help barrier the Mk3 “Pretendolino” set powered by Freightliner’s 90048 (Thank God for camera phones).

Freightliner Class 90 Locomotive 90048 on the Pretendolino Set

Saturday

Problems on my inbound journey saw me arrive at work with 10 minutes to spare (2 Hours to do a 45 minute journey, thanks London Underground).

After signing on and checking the plan for the evening, I realised that I would be “controlling” the team and it was my responsibility to make sure that we checked as many trains on our assigned platforms as possible.  A quick check of our daily orders showed that we would be fairly busy, which can be a blessing or a curse.

First half of the shift passed without incident and after a quick bite to eat it was back to the coal face for the second half.  News reached us that we were expecting between 400 and 1000 England fans returning from Wembley, luckily this is where planning came in and we heralded the arrival of extra staff from Birmingham and Manchester to make up the staff shortage we were suffering.

After the first train of our second half, the rail enthusiast in me kicked in again as we had a visitor.

EWS Class 66 Diesel 66183 after arrival at Euston

EWS Class 66 Diesel 66183 arrived on platform 16 with the return leg of UK Railtours Midland and Great Central No.2 Railtour. Cue me crossing the bottom of the platforms with my phone in hand to get a couple of shots before it vanished to Wembley Depot (this job does have its benefits).

A welcome break from the norm but it was back to work as the first fans arrived for their trains home.

A couple of trains passed until the first issue of the evening an old favourite of mine, adults travelling on child tickets.  After the usual questioning the “children” bought adult tickets and continued on their way with a flea in their ear about not doing it again.  The first batch of England fans came and went unusually happy after what was a poor showing by the team, some even offering to share their beverages with us(No dry trains tonight),an offer that we cannot accept.

In this job, you get used to dealing with the same problems on every shift with the most frequent being people on Advance tickets that have missed their booked train.  Tonight would be no different except for one passenger who tried to board an Anglo Scottish service 2 DAYS early!! A quick bit of friendly discussion about her options and she decided to buy a new ticket so I passed her on to the Train Manager rather than making her go back to the booking office and thus missing the train.

Football fans and trains passed and it finally became time for the last train of our shift and also the day.  Normally this is not a problem but the powers that be decided to board a semi-fast local service in the adjacent platform.  Cue revenue officers trying to differentiate between our passengers and those for the local and you can picture the chaos.  Luckily we managed to gain control and checked the vast majority of passengers right up to departure when a gentleman approached me with a ticket for a train that didn’t exist….

The gentleman asked me where his train was departing from and upon checking his ticket found out that he was travelling from Bournemouth to Wolverhampton routed via Reading on a CrossCountry Trains ticket.  Unfortunately we had no-one able to sell a ticket for him to continue his journey so he had to return to the booking office, all the time pleading with us to let him travel.

My only question with this passenger is, how did he get to us in the first place?  The routing of his ticket should have taken him from Bournemouth to Southampton and then via CrossCountry through Reading to Birmingham and change there for Wolverhampton.  For this passenger to be in front of us he would have had to miss Southampton, continue on to London, cross London and walk up to us, all the time with a ticket that should have been checked on the train from Bournemouth and also rejected at the ticket barriers on both National Rail and London Underground.

Luckily there were still services via another operator to Birmingham so I hope the gentleman managed to complete his journey with no further problems.  Anyway, for me that was the end of the shift and the commencement of a 1.5 hour journey home, thanks again London Underground.