The Almost Accurate History of Railway Gen

"I will give you three bona fide Travellers Fare sandwiches, all made within the past twenty-eight days and still recognisably triangular in shape..."

What goes up, must come down. 31419 and 31413 provide unusual power for the 16:28 Sundays only Paddington - Hereford, on 24th May 1981.

Gen. Advance information relating, in the context of this article, to specific railway vehicles on specific train services. In particular, anything unexpected.

Even though we now live in an age of information overload, it's still not a given that we'll be able to find out what's going where until it's been and gone. But railway gen is a lot more accessible in 2021 than it was in 1981, and sweeping changes to the way the railway operates have meant that most of the chaseables now run outside of the working timetable.

The Introduction of the EWS Class 66

"The prototype bogie did not come with the same durability warranty as the production version. For this reason, it was always planned to update the prototype bogies to the ‘passed’ version at an early stage."

Still almost brand new in summer 2000, No. 66220 scales the Lickey Incline with a long rake of loaded coal hoppers, and some distant rear-end assistance from triple-grey 60068.

The arrival of the EWS (history of EWS here) Class 66 locomotives is widely remembered by the UK motive power enthusiast as a launching pad for the biggest cull in the history of British-built diesel freight traction. But for those more focused on the prosperity of the railway, the Class 66’s grand entrance was a bravura performance. From speed of delivery, through whirlwind, pre-approved acceptance, to the unprecedented streamlining of inventory and maintenance, the birth and roll-out of the Class 66 was a masterclass in efficiency.

The £350,000,000 order for 250 brand new freight locomotives was placed almost immediately after the EWS brand came into being in spring 1996. Idealistically, EWS would have bought secondhand to reduce costs, but it’s not an ideal world, and there was no high-quantity secondhand market for a GB-compatible loco with the operational improvements EWS required. So they approached General Motors to talk about an upgrade on the GB-proven Class 59/2, with a modernised engine, ‘self-steering’ bogies, and highly advanced computer control.

Lickey Incline: Before the Wires Mega Info-Pictorial – 1980 to 2017

"One of the reasons the bankers were more intensively used before 1980 was the existence of unfitted freight, which was an untold problem on the Lickey due to the danger of runaways."

It’s one of the most famous railway locations in the UK, but most of the history that built and perpetuated the Lickey Incline’s reputation for train-related excitement, is now trapped in the past. In this article I’m going to recapture some of that past. This is a picture-rich journey through a 37-year period that would culminate in the ultimate destruction of the great location’s aesthetics: electrification. Get a drink, take a seat, and let’s head back to our starting point in the early 1980s…

The CrossCountry HSTs

"...All but one had been Virgin CrossCountry power cars before the introduction of the Voyagers, and so were really just returning to old haunts."

In 2003, when Virgin Trains announced that their use of HSTs on CrossCountry had come to an end, it looked as though more than two decades of regular IC125 service over the network had passed into history for good.

Demand for the 1970s design icons did, however, persist, and for the next few years Virgin drafted in HSTs on short-term hire to extend capacity when required. But when Arriva won the new CrossCountry franchise in summer 2007, they pledged that the HST would return to daily operation on XC routes. A new era was about to begin for the vintage-yet-still-modern classic. MTU-engined Class 43s in the distinctive late noughties XC livery would become a familiar sight, and remain so for over a decade…