The Royal Wessex - April 27th

Hope Tim on the bridge got better pics than I did. And yes. It was raining.

Through Chiswick at 09:18am

 

Bombed it through Winchester at 11:00, good whistle too!

James at SVN

 

Not entirely on topic, but quite a few of us down at Swanage have been there and done that. Arrive at Swanage in the middle of summer, relief crew took over the loco on arrival in platform 2 and driver and fireman straight off down the beach...

 

Not Bloody Happy!

Saw here at the crossing by siemens at norden, then dashed to the other side of the city to find the DGL, after 30 mins of traveling round the docks and getting very wet I found it, just as the last carrage strolled by. Bloody steam engines.....

 

It didn't bomb it through the Battledown Flyover junction, more like a snails pace. The service a few minutes beforehand did the same with a lot of horn at the foot crossing, there wasn't anything before that. I hope it wasn't going slow because of people being where they shouldn't be on the foot crossing (I couldn't see as it's a few minutes walk down the track). To top it off the rain was very heavy at the time so I ended up with some rather rubbish footage grrr. Fingers crossed for Andover tonight.

 

Through Poole pretty much to the second. Held briefly on Holes Bay waiting for SWT to clear the section but should be onto the branch within its slot.

 

Does anyone know exactly where she will be reversing in Southampton?

 

Not seen any updates recently so hope all is well. Clan Line looked her usual sparkling self going down at head of train at top of Parkstone Bank on time and following up behind the 67 this evening at parkstone station at 1824. She was under very light steam this evening

Swanage Railway did well out of the publicity for the day with a slot on the main evening BBC South Today showing Clan Line arriving at Swanage and interviews with various people including a clip from an interview on the footplate with Wayne

DH

 

The BBC-South piece is on BBC-South I Player until early evening tomorrow. About 20 minutes in.

Very enjoyable, with Wayne taking part as has been mentioned.

But, eeerrrr, I thought the best bit was the weather girl who followed on afterwards! (wink).

 

She was at school with my youngest KentYeti! brightens up our local forecasts ! DH

 

Thanks for the alert about the BBC South Today report. Clan Line gets a mention in the intro headlines and also at 20:35 here.

 

Thanks for all the updates today and for the heads up regarding BBC South Today. Have just uploaded my video from today, captured at Winchester, Southampton Parkway, Swaythling, Totton, Soton Maritime yard and at Dean. The link is below

35028 - The Royal Wessex 27-04-12 - YouTube

James at SVN
JC off to Devon tomorrow for 5043, then off to Sapperton on Sunday

 

I should have known better. Probably thanks to all the publicity (which in itself isn't a bad thing), Andover platform was rammed with people, and unfortunately rammed with a lot of people who thought themselves to be the most important person there & only their shots mattered. Then shortly before she was due to leave, apart from a Salisbury service coming in (which bunched everyone up instead of just waiting for it to go which they could have done & still captured everything), someone from work who'd been in London for the day had seen me so decided to come & talk to me & just wouldn't shut the 'beep' up, then whilst walking back to my car he had the audacity not only to start asking me about a problem with his laptop, he also dropped a not so subtle hint that he wouldn't mind a lift home - he didn't get one. With the weather this morning & this evenings fun, don't you get the feeling sometimes that it just wasn't meant to be lol. Sorry, rant over

Anyhow, I've not seen Clan Line before, what a splendid looking engine it is. I did get some vid that I'll put together probably Sunday, just a shame that box was on the back for the whole trip, rather than just the backhaul between Swanage & S'oton. It also sounded like it had a bad flat spot as it wasn't half clunking, the box that is.

 

Good to see the springs doing their job through Winchester James!

A good days chasing from your video there though, nicely done.

 

Thank you to the person who was doing the Twitter updates, very useful now that RTLive has died.

 

Thanks Ian for your kind comment. The springs got a work out that's for sure! I work in Winchester, and recently the freight trains have really been going through at their limited top speed. It is quite disconcerting seeing the containers bounce like that, and am quite surprised that NR don't do something about it. It has always been a bumpy ride through Winchester, I remember a day when my train didn't stop at Winchester (can't remember why off the top of my head), but the point work led to quite a few spilt cups of tea and a few pieces of shortbread on the floor!

 

Took these grabs before the programme disappears from the BBC iPlayer:

 

I hate the way the media describes locos etc. "THE Clan Line". They always do it.