Atlantic Coast Express UKRT/MNLPS 23/09/17

Haha, wondered when the 'D' word would crop up!

 

My footage of Clan Line in superb form at Grateley, Tisbury and Honiton Bank. Her performance would have made David Shepherd proud. RIP David Shepherd CBE.

 

Two stills from today, captured at Grateley and Sampford Peverell. Full credit to the MNLPS (and the DB crew), Clan Line's performances seem to get better and better as each trip goes on.



James

 

Yes it was some day, possibly the best I have had since 1967. Some of the acceleration away from stops and checks was quite astonishing with 465 tons. Just a shame that GWR can't run a train service or even make sensible decisions when regulating, unlike Southern who were brilliant at Salisbury. Full details in the next Heritage Railway. Good to meet so many old friends from the days of steam and have a pint or two at Exeter with one of the ace drivers from the 1960s, still going strong at 87 years young!

 

Agree with all the above. 35028's performance was a thing of legend yesterday. Shows what a good choice was made on driving wheel size. Tornado is probably the only engine that steams as well as Clan Line but the bigger driving wheels will never allow it to be the equal accelerating from rest and checks. One thing though, why are you giving GWR such stick when surely the signalling decisions were made by Network Rail??

 

I had a great day chasing 35028 Clan Line working the Atlantic Coast Express thanks to some great driving and planning by Evening Star.. To get 3 shots between Yeovil and Exeter is nothing short of amazing.
Heres my video of the day..

 

Yes agreed signalling decisions are but not the running of the trains themselves which is GWR. NR compounded the problems by poor regulating at both Frome and Swindon. Nobody thought to override the train plan. Neither the Weymouth train nor the Bristol HST would have suffered if they had

 

Pulling out of Deepcut towards Frimley Green





About to go under the canal aqueduct at Frimley Green

 

Echoing what's said above - an ACE (geddit?) day out back to my homeland. Was stood with the dropside all the way down for the climb up Honiton and had to pinch myself; she sounded wonderful.

Nice to see a few faces from previous tours and I'm glad the late arrival of the stock didn't mess things up at all.

Really looking forward to the Wessex Express in November, mainly as there won't be any GWR trains to get in the way. Half-tempted to stick in a delay repay form for the minutes they've wasted on charters I've been on this year.

 

Brookwood in the gloom yesterday morning, fine sight though

https://www.flickr.com/photos/alts1985/37234699986/in/dateposted-public/

 

To be fair to GWR it sounds as though they were dealing with some delays due to a tree on the line between Westbury and Warminster around 11:30-12:00 and the knock on effect caused by this. That train which delayed us getting into Frome looks like it started Worcester vice Great Malvern due to the late arrival in the inbound stock.

Still, didn't seem to stop us getting some periods of brisk running between Frome and Reading.

 

Any idea why they held Clan Line at Thingley Jnc to put an HST ahead into Chippenham and then the HST stopped/was held in Chippenham for ages when the line ahead was clear?

 

And then stopped us again at Swindon due to the HST spending 10 minutes there. We could have gone passed at 75 mph and been tucked away at Milton before the HST got to Wantage Road. All could have been avoided if we had gone straight into Frome for a splash and dash and then been held at Westbury for our path if necessary. Its not just yesterday but every time I go near the GWR on a charter they manage to muck things up. Yesterday three trains late including the ACE instead of two.

 

Perhaps railtours are further down the priority list than service trains, which would become delayed return services later in the day and thousands of passengers "mucked up".

 

There's no doubt about it - you're right on that front.

One thing that hasn't been touched on was the clever move to put the Penzance train into P5 at Exeter so we could get off on time. It also got rid of a few people from the platform, which was helpful.

And speaking of Exeter, I found the platform staff really unhelpful/disinterested/rude. There's the lady who shouts at people to get back when taking photos of the loco, but there was a bloke who shut my door. I then opened the window (so I could continue talking to my family), he turned back and looked at me. "Don't worry, I'm just opening the window" I said. "Good for you" was grunt the back.

Finally, it was a bit of an odd consist yesterday - four dining cars, one first class non-dining and three standards by my reckoning.

Minor gripes aside though, it was a wonderful day. Hopefully there are plans for a re-run next year when Waterloo and the mainline are both open. If that happens, I'll be on it in a heartbeat.

 

Nominal tractive effort is virtually the same for both. Is there any significant difference in the adhesive weights?

 

It's not very often that I defend NR but Clan Line arrived at Blatchbridge Jn. 18 mins early. It had to allow the Weymouth unit to exit the single line from Frome. The unit was only running 7 mins late so it's a bit unfair to expect NR to override the schedule. There was also a west bound HST passing Blatchbridge Jn. while the unit was stopped at Frome.

As already stated Clan Line enjoyed a brilliant run to the west country yesterday. She runs like a sewing machine. It was also good to see Duchess of Sutherland hauling the Cathedrals Express to Salisbury.

Well done to all concerned. <BJ>

 

Big Al - and others - who have commented on this are not wrong of course. It is an indisputable fact that charters are near the bottom of the pile when it comes to train priorities. That said, the art of 'regulation' is exactly that - and different people (i.e. Controllers) interpret regulation in different ways. It's a bit like a rugby team who have been coached to play in a very specific way, and continue to stick to the 'game plan' even when they're 30 -0 down, whilst other teams can switch quickly to a 'Plan B' by relying on the players to change tactics as the game progresses, and 'think on their feet'. Rigidity versus flexibility you could say, and it seems the 'Southern' - especially at Salisbury - and the 'Western' dealt with the operating issues in this contrasting fashion. When I was a part of the charter planning and timing operation in the industry, I always said that the Golden Rule with steam was "when it's running, keep it running, so don't stop it unnecessarily". At the end of the day though, it's the controllers and signallers who decide.
To be fair, we had visited Salisbury early last week to speak to the key people about the operating plan there. Having a local signalling panel controlling the station does help of course, but over the years we've always found the rail staff at Salisbury very keen and helpful.