13th October 2012 - A class 56 in HungarySaturday 13th October No decisions as to what to do to be made this morning; that had been done a couple of months ago when we booked on Mercia Charters “The Pre-Emptive Strike” tour which would give us the best part of two days touring Hungary behind former British Railways motive power. Today was the turn of 0659 001, previously known as 56101, and now in service with private operator Floyd along with five class 86s, more of which tomorrow. The coaching stock was a diverse collection of two former couchettes, an ex Austrian Railways “Schlieren” coach and a dining car all in a dark green livery which, together with the black loco, would make photography challenging in anything other than bright sunlight. 0659 001 at Háros The first of a number of photo stops was taken before we had even left greater Budapest, at the rather rundown station of Háros where there was also the chance to take a couple of pictures of passing trains. It was only about a further hour before we stopped again at Pétfürdő where we had to cross another train, the sun was attempting to come out by now but was not at the best angle for photography but, hey, it could have been raining! As we were here for half an hour, the opportunity for a seminar (group photo with the train) was taken once everybody had got their pictures. Seminar at Pétfürdő Once the train we were booked to cross had passed, we set off but there was another stop just five minutes later at a place called Öskü which didn’t look promising as the station was in shadow, but somebody had other ideas as we rolled gently past the halt and a couple of local photographers perched up a telegraph pole and came to a halt on a curve with a decent open area on the left hand (sunny) side. No platform? No problem as anybody who wanted to could clamber off and jostle for the prime position to take a photo; the area of open space being rather less generous than it appeared at first sight. 0659 001 at Öskü Onwards for another 10 minutes to Veszprém and it was time to cross the next Budapest-bound train so we had another quarter of an hour or so to take even more pictures, this time including a “native” class 418 (M41) diesel loco which added a splash of colour to complement the class 56s black livery. 0659 001 at Veszprém After all that activity it was time to relax on the train for a while as the 56 was put through its paces though it was never going to really extend itself on only four coaches. In our opinion these locomotives are best experienced on heavy freight trains in excess of 1,000 tons; when there were plenty of them still in service in the UK we were more interested in chasing them round to photograph on freight trains rather than riding on railtours or visiting the odd diesel gala that they might appear on or in. Having said that, we are quite amenable to getting the odd one in for haulage and 56101 was one of the ones that we missed in the UK. It was over four hours into the tour before the first bit of “rare” track cropped up in the shape of the Celldömölk avoiding line, there was a brief pause here then it was onwards to the next bit of unusual track, the Győr avoiding line. Just as we branched off onto this there was a heritage road coach parked next to the track with its proud owners waving at the train and greeting us but they were soon left behind as we went a little way round the single track curve before stopping for another “ballast leap” photo stop. 0659 001 at Győr Just as we were all back on the train and about to leave, the road coach was seen again carefully making its way along the track in the cess; we are not sure if the intention was to have brought it alongside the train to get a joint photo or not, a shame if it was and they mis-timed the meeting, but at least it enabled us to get a hurried shot of it from the window. EZY-690 at Győr Next up was the highlight of the day, a trip along the relatively new line to GyőrGönyű-Kikötő, a port on the river Danube. This was accessed by a decent length of single line which led to a small yard next to an office building which we presumed was where our loco was meant to run round the train but for one slight problem; there appeared to be no empty roads. There were a few hopeful glances towards a German Railways class 290 parked further down hoping that there might be a chance of a “shunt release” move but after waiting for a few minutes the train carried on towards the port itself. A little further on from the “yard”, the line divided with the left hand route heading towards the river and the right hand one towards some open land which looked as though it was intended for future occupation by industrial and warehousing units. There were a couple of sidings and loops down this stretch, many of which contained some brand new tank wagons which had been built in Romania some of which were a mere two days old looking at the dates on the side. 84 7836 688-3 at Gönyű Kikötő Onwards we went until it wasn’t possible to go any further, no buffers; just a stop board planted in a hump of earth and hemmed in by tank wagons. At first sight it wasn’t the best place for a photo but a bit of a walk round produced some acceptable results though the best view was probably from the top of the end tank wagon which quite a few people braved. We declined this viewpoint due to a long-standing dislike of heights. Gönyű Kikötő The only way out of here now was to propel which the train proceeded to do for the whole 12.2km back to the main line. The class 290 loco had now gone from the “yard” next to the offices but there was still no room to run round so we carried on in reverse with a stop for another photo on a nice open stretch en route. 0659 001 at Győr Gönyű Kikötő Back on the main line there was the chance for a nice fast run along “line 1” to Komárom where we turned off along “line 5” for a more sedate run which would take us back to Székesfehérvár with the inevitable photo stop en route. There was a further brief halt at Székesfehérvár before we took line 44 across to line 40a for the run back to Budapest with one final photo stop in the fading light at Börgönd where the driver kindly set back a bit so the semaphore signals were a little closer. 0659 001 at Börgönd The remainder of the journey was mostly in darkness and was a bit of a stagger back round to Keleti where we finally arrived around 10 minutes late bringing to a close an enjoyable and interesting day out.
Keywords:
Hungary,
Mercia Charters
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