The Old Normal: Classic British Rail Traction in Procession

In 1999, Dudley Port saw the passage of over a hundred scheduled, loco-powered runs per weekday.

Loco-haulage. A relentless stream at Dudley Port canal junction in 1999.

We're now deep in the era of “bespoke trainspotting”. We usually know what's coming before we leave home, and we can monitor the journey(s) of the train(s) so that we don't have to wait around long at the location. For some, “bespoke trainspotting” has been the norm since the Blackberry era of the early to mid 2000s. For others, decades earlier. I can remember advance summer Saturday gen being shouted out from a soapbox on Sheffield station in 1981 - to a large and very captive audience, and a round of applause.

So gen, and the bespoke activity it encourages, predated the Internet by a long time. But until the early to mid 2000s, we didn't actually need to know precisely what was happening in order to head off for an enjoyable spell at the lineside. Before that, the general UK rail traffic - the normal - carried inherent interest.

A Railway Month in Pictures: February 2001

"Through the latter part of the month, the whole country commenced a farmland shutdown, which affected a huge number of public footpaths and saw many popular railway photography vantage points labelled out of bounds."

Virgin Trains 43194 at Wolverhampton.

If you keep a diary and you were a UK railway enthusiast at the beginning of the century, you may notice quite a downbeat tone across your February 2001 entries. For the first time, signs of the homogenised future heralded by privatisation were starting to show, and the horizon was far from golden.

With the Class 175s finally up and running, January 2001 had seen the last of the Class 37-hauled services between Birmingham and North Wales. Meanwhile, another looming threat to old stock became a reality on 8th Feb, when the first Pendolino - 390001 - left Alstom Washwood Heath behind 66087, for testing at Ashfordby. The following day, the final three EWS Class 31s were withdrawn from regular service at Old Oak Common. And the following week, engineering work between Exeter and Newton Abbot shut down services in the West Country.

Millennium Turns - West Midlands Rail Scene Around the Year 2000

"The Class 56s dug in their heels to the point where, in the second half of 2000, they actually made something of a comeback."

We kick off our nostaligic pictorial just south of Bankers Bridge, Bromsgrove, with a real encapsulation of the times. Virgin HST sets in mixes of InterCity and Virgin livery were common through the late 1990s. By 2000, most of the repainting was complete, but there were still plenty of opportunities to see the occasional red set with a rogue IC power car at one end. And with time running out for the last IC stock set, one complete InterCity formation was assembled in Y2K. The set above, captured on the doorstep of the new millennium at the end of summer 1999, is led by 43159.

An Afternoon at Birmingham International

A seat beside the NEC, for a pictorial snapshot of the period right before the start of Operation Princess.

We so often represent a moment in train spotting time with just a single snapshot. How much more informative would it be to see a whole afternoon’s worth of traffic in a single post? Well, that’s the concept behind An Afternoon at Birmingham International.

West Midlands Cross-City South: The Diesel Years

"Ironically though, the lure of the new rail service took so many cars off the roads that the bus services initially speeded up!"

Bournville station was one of many locations that lost its best photographic vantage points when the electric wires were installed.

It’s funny the things we end up missing. If someone had told me when the West Midlands Cross-City line opened in spring ’78, that this was as good as travel between Longbridge and Four Oaks would ever get, I’d have categorised them as insane. And yet nothing has recaptured the charm of the Tyseley diesel mechanical units which characterised the first 15 years of Cross-City service. In this post I’m publishing some of my pictorial memories from the Cross-City’s diesel years, and summarising the story up until the point of electrification.

Tyseley Loco Works in the 2000s - Pictorial Addendum

More visions from Birmingham's haven of classic traction in the first decade of the new millennium...

Although I packed an absolute vault of photos into the Tyseley Locomotive Works in the 2000s info-pictorial earlier this year, there were so many shots left over that I'm now publishing a Part 2 - and there's easily enough for a Part 3 too. However, I'm leaving the original article as the info-base, and focusing on the images in this addendum.

Old is the New New: Tyseley Locomotive Works in the 2000s

"Part of the reason that the heritage site had gained this multi-purpose persona, was the relatively new overlap between preservation and service operations."

An exemplar of the "vintage stock, modern uses" ethos which placed Tyseley high in the modern rail enthusiast's consciousness. Class 31, No. 31190. Independently owned, restored to main line spec by hire company Fragonset, and by centenary weekend in June 2008, exhibiting as part of Network Rail's structure gauging train.

If you grew up after the steam age, chances are you never regarded Tyseley as a Holy Grail of railway pilgrimages. Even post-kettledom, railway fans have tended to favour locomotives over multiple units. So whilst the West Midland spotters of the 1970s and 1980s would plan to visit the locomotive depots at Bescot and Saltley, Tyseley's DMU facility would almost invariably get the cold shoulder.

But times change, and through the first half of the 2000s there was a notable redistribution of interest. As the privatised railway began to heavily modernise, Bescot and Saltley became less interesting to fans of classic traction. Tyseley, simultaneously, became more interesting. Tyseley's newfound zeitgeist would culminate in a phenomenally successful, packed-to-the-rafters, queues-down-the-street centenary event in June 2008. In this pictorial, I'm going to document the period leading up to that event, and then the event itself...

Birmingham New Street: Millennium Nights

"The electric loco would then come out of the bay, and couple onto this end of the remaining stock. That train would then go forward to Warrington, departing via Duddeston and Bescot."

A classic 2000 scene, combining vintage electrics, on 22nd March.

Outside of specialist circles, the dawn of the new millennium is probably not remembered for a fat lot today. Most of us who are old enough may have some hazy recollection of a world-destroying computer bug that failed to destroy the world, a botched diamond robbery involving a JCB and a speedboat… and maybe a party that didn’t quite live up to the spectacle that Prince optimistically forecast in 1982.

But at the centre of UK rail operations, the year 2000 fell amid a period of accelerated change. And in Birmingham, the year brought an end to a good few long-time rail traffic institutions. The Class 309 EMU, the Class 310 EMU, scheduled mail duties for Class 47s, and booked Class 37-hauled passenger services. The ongoing delivery of Class 66 diesels continued to devastate variety on the freight scene, which, as we’ll see in this pictorial, did have a presence at New Street station...

'Tractors' to Brum: The Swansong of Daily Class 37s into Birmingham New Street

"Railtrack North West blocked use of the new units on the Holyhead – Birmingham route in a dispute over gauge clearances... The 37s would have to stay. Good times!"

37412 and 37429 formed a rockin' partnership for the 23:50 Birmingham - Holyhead on Sunday 16th July 2000.

Even at the time, we couldn’t quite believe it was still happening. Multiple daily Class 37-hauled arrivals and departures at Birmingham New Street, and not all of them single-headed! “Spoiled for choice” is a phrase that, outside of preservation, has long since ceased holding any relevance for fans of classic UK rail traction. But the scene at Birmingham really was like that in the late 1990s...

1980s Pictorial: Diesels at Birmingham New Street

"At the start of the 1980s, Saltley drivers were not passed to drive the Class 50s, so all WR-bound services crewed from Saltley were forced to use a Midland compatible loco."

Remember when Birmingham New Street station acted as a relentless conveyor belt of loco-hauled trains, diesel mechanical units, and 'dinosaur' EMUs? When Rail blue still ruled supreme? Well, in this post I'm going to recall that era with a selection of diesel-focused photographs taken between 1980 and 1986. Without further ado, let's hand over to an archaic Praktica LTL, Pentax P30, and cheaper-than-cheap Prinz compact, for a timehop back to the glory days...