European Railroad Discussion > An extraordinary Halloween

After last weekend's fun in west Wales this weekend saw me back in more familiar surroundings but in wholly unfamiliar conditions. I had the afternoon off work on Friday and spent it in and around some of my usual haunts east and west of March in Cambridgeshire. What was extraordinary was the temperatures, it peaked at 23C in the sunshine in early afternoon when normally you could reasonably expect 13C at this time of year.

I started off just after 1:45 p.m. at Beggars Bridge, where the Ely to Peterborough cross country line crosses the Twenty Foot River, 66186 is on the 6M70 Self Discharge Train (SDT) from Chesterton Junction (Cambridge) to the LaFarge quarry at Mountsorrel in the East MIdlands. The SDTs consists of sets of permanently coupled wagons with an auxiliary diesel and a conveyor belt beneath the wagons with a directional discharge gantry. It means that LaFarge can serve terminals which neither have a grab or facilities for gravity discharge.

From Beggar's Bridge I drove round March to a footpath crossing a few miles to the east at Green Drove. It's a bit of a hike from the road but I made it just in time for GBRf's 4E33 Felixstowe to Doncaster behind 66717 Good Old Boy. The name is a memorial to Steve Drew who was GBRf's operations manager in their early years and who died in 2005.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/14 13:55 by 86235.

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Passenger service over the fens are provided by three franchises - Abellio Greater Anglia (really the Nederlandse Spoorwegen), Arriva XC (Deutsch Bahn) and East Midlands Trains (the international bus company - Stagecoach). This is one of the hourly XC services from Birmingham New Street to Stansted Airport approaching Green Drove from the west, formed of a Bombardier class 170 Turbostar DMU.

Nearer to March and here was a surprise, an empty stock extra. I had seen on realtimetrains that it was running but had no idea what it was., I suspected it might have been an MU returning to Norwich after some TLC at Brush in Loughborough. In fact it was DRS 37604 and an Abellio Greater Anglia DVT returning from refurbishment. These form the north end of their loco hauled sets on the London Liverpool Street to Norwich service. It's passing Silt Drove crossing just east of March South Junction.

And finally another GBRf service, 4L78 from Selby (in North Yorkshire) to Felixstowe and like the first picture this is approaching the Twenty Foot River at Beggars Bridge as the sun starts to set at 4:17 p.m.

I took a few more pictures as it was a splendid afternoon and very busy with both freight and passenger services,

http://nick86235.smugmug.com/Trains/2014/Autumn-2014/i-bhJZQ9X



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/04/14 00:14 by 86235.

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Wow, great catch on image 5! Gotta be rare in this day and age?

Some very nice images, looks like a fine day and you made good use of it!

Good pictures. The fens is nice place to see trains, as well as some older buses still in regular use. Drove in a hired car the first time. Rode the trains second time but did not get a chance to ride the buses.

Jim

Thanks, funnily enough I was stuck behind an elderly double decker from a firm based in Whittlesey on my way home to North Norfolk. It looked like a Halloween charter of some kind, judging by the zombie like characters aboard. But this being the Fens you can't really tell :-)

Great pics Nick, thank you for sharing class 37 running pic too!

Here you go Nick, it is operated by Judd's Travel. This was on the A605 between King's Dyke and Peterborough. Unfortunately I do not know what kind of bus it is. Other than maybe stopping at Kings Dyke the line through the Fens doesn't lend itself to trainspotting by bus like some of the other places in the UK do.

Jim

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Yep, that was it! At least one like that.