Tornado to Exeter 25 August

Westbury to Newbury in a little outside even time with 65 over Savernake in a rain storm. Brilliant stuff.

 

Reading to Slough. Booked for 14 min. It's 17.5 miles. You couldn't make it up! Waiting at Theale for our path to Reading snooker hall. (You need a red before any other colour)

 

A 'Western' would do it

 

Lovely finale from Reading up the main all the way. 19 min to Slough. 25 to Padd incl sig check. Running in the 70s. Well done to all the crews...and Tornado. What a machine.

 

Just a few additional thoughts about The Devon Belle.

This was a well conceived trip by UKRT/A1ST and worth repeating with any big pacific. If we really are going to be stuffed in future for something decent down to Exeter out of Waterloo (and please....Victoria is NOT an alternative), then a Paddington exit works well for pickups and water. It also has great variety. Decent climbs: Honiton, Whiteball and then Savernake/Brewham each way plus some fast stretches: Exeter - Taunton, Taunton - Westbury, Westbury - Newbury were all good.

Hill climbing, given the weather conditions, was pretty impressive: Savernake - 63 westbound, 65 eastbound. Honiton - 27 after a slow start through Seaton at 36, Brewham - 53 westbound, 56 eastbound. Timekeeping was good throughout the day and the dash home from Reading up the fast was unusual and a fitting end to an excellent performance by Tornado and the crews.

The only disappointment was not being able to have a full run at Whiteball on the return. Wayne Thompson had wound her up to 70 by Cullompton before we were looped at Tiverton to let the London train pass. It was ironic that the early departure from Exeter so a Plymouth bound X-Country could use the platform turned out not to be needed. We could easily have stayed where we were and let the London train pass at Exeter as the XC was twenty late. But that's a detail. All in all this was money well spent and not a diesel in sight.

 

Well actually we didn't. We were early coming up to Southcote Junction but not for the first time it took ages to get into Reading and that included sitting on the curve into the station. As a result we were late away. Network Rail believed the daft time of 14 min that we had been given between Reading and Slough so although we went flat out (17.5 miles in 19 minutes) that didn't stop us holding up the HST. We should have been crossed to the relief after Slough but remained on the main and kept to booked time. However as we rolled into P1 (that I'm guessing was the ML decision as we should have been P10 off the RL) the HST was alongside us into P8 having dropped over 10 min from Reading. I hope that this is not put down to Tornado as Fred Lewis did the best he could at the regulator. It was really a problem back at Reading that Control generated for itself. So much for the streamlining of operations at Reading after the new track work and signalling!