RTC Sherborne Christmas Carols: 3/12/25

There was definitely DL assistance from Gillingham to Buckhorn Western Tunnel and elsewhere at times but most of the time Clan Line was doing all the work, comparing times and speeds with previous efforts with Clan Line on similar loads.

Don

 

I assume that was to try and make up time on the single line section but both of the up trains were late so made no difference in the end. It’s difficult to know from the front end but Bill was certainly working Clan Line hard away from Gillingham.

 

Well maybe empty seats, if there were any, may be due to a number of reasons, not least the current economic climate, so unless some meaningful research is done we may never know. However there does appear, if you chuck in the mainline Polar Express, SD day with multi trips, plus all the other tours, more Christmas steam trips in the South of the country than say 10 years ago.

 

Whatever the reasons if anyone was put off this trip for other than financial reasons they made the wrong decision.

 

Yes exactly but only 5 late arriving after the speeds suggest a DL free climb after Templecombe. The speeds climbing from Gillingham were way beyond what Clan Line could have achieved on its own and by the levels before Templecombe the battle had been won.

Don

 

Whats a DL?

 

Yes the uncertainty is annoying but I was determined to go on this anyway as it may be my last main line steam trip unless I can find a DL free one which I can get to. I enjoyed it very much especially the lovely swoop down through Andover. Apart from the stewards I saw nobody I knew which says a lot.

 

Hmmm. . . .. I would have thought about going on it, masked up all day, if it had been MK1 stock, when some fresh air could have at least got in.

But masked up all day in a sealed MKII would be too much of a risk, IMHO.

So maybe I made the right decision for other than financial reasons @Johnb

But of course I am sad not to have been on the Basingstoke-Salisbury section and with big brother @gricerdon with whom I have been gricing since the days when grasshoppers towered above me!

Bryan

 

Why not just call it a Diesel then?

 

Some of us 100% steam loco enthusiasts have got software that stops us typing the D word.



Bryan

 

Mine allows diesels provided they are working trains by themselves and not involved with steam.

 

D/L was a common railway abbreviation back in steam days, as shown here in a page from a weekly STN (Special Traffic Notice) from the last week of April 1965, six weeks before steam ended on the SR Central Section.


Some of us dinosaurs like @The Gricing Owl and myself still remember the old terminology from those bygone days and forget that you youngsters dont always know what we are on about. Sorry

Peter

 

I think it is a fair assumption that people using this forum would be able to deduce quite easily what the acroynym means, given the context.

 

Possibly.
But like anywhere or any industry that is a bold assumption. You may think that after 41 years I would have known all the acronyms in the aviation world. I and most others did not, in fact one of the larger vendors produced a booklet of "common acronyms" that ran to about 20 pages, and that was just mainly for onboard components and systems. I sat in a meeting once where a new joiner asked an engineer what an acronym meant. He could not answer because they only ever used the acronym.
I suspect there are as many in the rail world as there are in aviation.

 

And some of us got very excited on seeing D/Ls 10202 and 10203 passing Bromley South on the Arrer sometime back in the vague past. Presumably one did not have enough power otherwise it would have needed a kettle on the rear!

 

I’m also a sinner, I once took a picture of a Deltic at Kings Cross!