11th April 2012 - Chasing class 20s11th April 2012 Another Wednesday off and another attempt to capture the Old Dalby to Neasden new “S” stock working; as a special treat seeing were both off for the day and the weather looked good we decided to drive up to Melton Mowbray. As we arrived in time to see the arrival of the locos and barrier wagons, the starting point was a footbridge just to the east of Melton accessed via a housing estate. We were not alone as there were three other photographers present, all locals who gave us some very good tips on what moves took place and on photo locations – thanks guys.
After capturing the four locos passing with the two barrier wagons, we set off for the footbridge overlooking the shed at Asfordby, managing to find it easily enough thanks to the excellent instructions though the road journey round to it was rather convoluted. The two “heritage” livery 20s (20227 in “red stripe” and 20142 in rail blue) had just detached one of the barrier wagons and were carefully propelling it towards the shed to collect the new unit. They whole shebang re-appeared a surprisingly short time later; as things looked to be running rather early, we had thought they might stay in the shed and have a cup of tea whilst there before emerging nearer to their booked departure time of 11:42. Not being sure that they would remain on site until the booked time, we decided to head off and find a suitable location after taking a couple of snaps of the new unit being coupled to the other barrier wagon; an over bridge on the outskirts of Melton Mowbray next to the sewage works (luckily the wind was not blowing in our direction!). By now, the sun had come out which made the wait much more pleasant but, as we had suspected, the train did not appear straight away and as time dragged on clouds started to bubble up with the result that the seemingly inevitable happened and the train was photographed half-in and half-out of shadow. The results were not a total disaster so we headed off for Melton Junction as the train would have to stop there in order to operate the ground frame to access the main line. Needless to say, we could see the train standing beyond the adjacent road bridge bathed in sunshine whilst it waited for the hourly Birmingham to Stansted DMU to pass but by the time the latter appeared a large amount of cloud had obscured the sun. There was a reprieve in that 7X09 had to stand whilst the ground frame was closed and the operative walked back to the locos during which time the sun popped out, but we could have done without the green security fencing in the foreground – moral, next time take the steps to stand on out of the car! Next stop was a field with a nice open view of the line at Rearsby but, as 7X09 was very unlikely to leave the loop at Melton Mowbray before its booked time, we called in an excellent local shop in Thrussington which was also a café / delicatessen and bought some rather nice sandwiches made with home-made fresh bread for lunch. The chosen location was bathed in glorious sunshine and we were joined by two other photographers as we settled down to wait for our chosen prey but, yet again, after snapping the Birmingham bound class 170 the sun promptly went behind a cloud only to struggle from behind it as the rear of the train passed by – at least there were some locos on the back. We had worked out that it would be possible to get one more shot on the Leicester to Burton on Trent line and chose to try a location at Castle Gresley that we had seen in pictures but had not previously visited ourselves. By this time, the weather was closing in and it was trying to rain, also the hedge next to the bridge had grown somewhat making it rather difficult to see over. Another local photographer turned up and we discussed tactics ending with him deciding to stand on the bridge using steps to see over the hedge and us settling on the field. By now the rain was increasing but, fortunately, 7X09 was running around 20 minutes early and a reasonable shot was obtained given the circumstances. A combination of the weather closing in and us having a fairly early start tomorrow dictated against further shots but we did undertake a minor diversion to get pics of Alrewas and Lichfield T.V. High Level signal boxes.
Keywords:
S Stock
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