"Given the strength of the task force, any leaves that had fallen vaguely into the vicinity of a West Midlands railway line must by this time have been cowering in fear."
Battleworn and doomed 37384 - one of the first two operational locos to join the '99 WKMS pool - gunks the down road of the Lickey Incline at the old Bromsgrove station, on 6th October 1999.
For the fan of first generation diesels, 1999 brought an almighty shock to the system. That year, vintage EWS freight locos were being taken out of traffic so quickly that if you spent a day shooting Kodachrome at Bescot, you could expect a couple of the locos you photographed to have left the fleet by the time your slides came back from processing. It really was that bad.
But the autumn brought glad tidings. A need to combat the slippery effects of leaf fall meant that trackwork in key locations would need to be doused in Sandite - the liquid-form adhesion aid. In some areas, Sandite treatment had become a bigger issue in the latter 1990s, as lineside vegetation had been allowed to pervade more than it had in the past. And in the final year before the Railtrack MPVs were due to take over, Sandite application was still a routine Class 37 duty. Hence, joyous murmurs abounded as EWS prepared to dig out some absolute bangers from their stocks of inactive 'Syphons', and restore them to life...
