European Railroad Discussion > Sunshine, showers and snow - April in South Wales

This was the scene at Portskewett on the Severn Estuary on Tuesday at 14:08, the sun was out, but as you can see there were plenty of shower clouds about. The train is the twice weekly (TFO) 6V50 from Burton on Trent to Cardiff Tidal, returning empty VGA vans for another load of steel reinforcing from Celsa Steel (UK) in Cardiff. In the background you can see one of the towers of the first Severn Crossing, today the M48 motorway.

16 minutes later I was a couple of miles to the west, in the village of Rogiet, the site of Severn Tunnel Junction for the return of the rebuilt 2+4 HST set on the 14:00 Cardiff to Taunton, as you can see the shower clouds were massing. Large drops were starting to fall as I returned to the car.

Back to Portskewett for the 4V44 Daventry to Wentloog Tesco Express intermodal, running a few minutes late at 14:45. The rain has, just about, stopped and it was starting to getting brighter behind me, another five minutes and there would have been some sun.

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Wednesday was even more extreme. I went out at lunchtime down to Newport because GBRf were running a train of 20 ex-coal hoppers from Wellingborough in the East Midlands of England to Cardiff Docks, presumably to be loaded with shipborne aggregate. Celebrity 66718 Sir Peter Hendy was the motive power, which was the main reason why I braved the conditions. Here is 6V42 passing Alexandra Dock Junction Yard at 14:20.

East Usk Yard is the other side of the city, I drove round there after seeing 66718 for the 4E42 Grange Sidings (Port Talbot steelworks) to York South empty coal hoppers. Port Talbot takes a few trainloads of coking coal a week from open cast sources in NE England, these are the returning empties. It's 14:52 and believe it or not the sun's out, but not for long!

That night as the air got colder there was a significant dump of relatively wet snow across the mountains of Wales and NW England, by Thursday morning we had about six inches of the stuff at about 1000'. But at lower levels it soon started to melt as the snow started turning to rain, but even at lunchtime there was still plenty of evidence, this is the 08:05 Holyhead to Cardiff, consisting of a single Alstom class 175 DMU



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/08/19 01:20 by 86235.

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Just beautiful Nick.Thanks for the run down.
Regards,DK

Nice images.  In the third image what is that device between the rails??
Doug

Thanks, it's the AWS (Advanced Warning System) magnet. Provides the driver with a visual and aural confirmation whether the next signal is clear or restricted or at danger. V old technology, dating back to WW2 with its antecedents going back even further.

As I understand it, if the driver does not acknowledge the warning of approach or stop indication,  the train will go into emergency. Is that correct?
How does AWS work in conjunction with TPWS? 

86235 Wrote:
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> Thanks, it's the AWS (Advanced Warning System)
> magnet. Provides the driver with a visual and
> aural confirmation whether the next signal is
> clear or restricted or at danger. V old
> technology, dating back to WW2 with its
> antecedents going back even further.

The British version of ATS, Automatic Train Stop. The Santa Fe was a big user.

prrmpup Wrote:
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> As I understand it, if the driver does not
> acknowledge the warning of approach or stop
> indication,  the train will go into emergency. Is
> that correct?
> How does AWS work in conjunction with TPWS? 
Yes, if the driver fails to acknowledge a restricted or stop indication the brakes will be applied. But the driver could acknowledge the restricted / stop indication from the AWS and not reduce speed / stop and nothing would happen, that's where TPWS comes in. It would put the train into emergency. There were a number of incidents (Purley 1989 comes immediately to mind) where a driver conciously or sub conciously cancelled the AWS signal but didn't slow down. In the case of Purley five people died. On the former Southern Region drivers can become used to running on double yellow signal aspects for significant distances owing to the volume of traffic, the weakness of AWS is that there is no difference in the warning for a restricted signal i.e. yellow or double yellow and a red / stop signal.

Thanks for the explanation. I never quite understood how they worked together.

Seems we could have bought this off the shelf long ago.  Now we have PTC for mucho billions.

Great shots!! I'm kinda surprised to see a non-patched Class 66 a full 10 years after EW&S folded, do you know how many of those remain without patches?

-Zach

z-trains Wrote:
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> Great shots!! I'm kinda surprised to see a
> non-patched Class 66 a full 10 years after EW&S
> folded, do you know how many of those remain
> without patches?
>
> -Zach

The majority of the class owned by DB Cargo i.e. dozens.