The last two saturday's have each had a steam excursion on the Devon main line, and as each one coincided with some nice weather (in October no less!!!) I decided to get out & do some railfanning. A secondary reason on the first Saturday was to get some nice photo's of Virgin's new Voyager units in action, and quickly I realised that a theme for the weekends could be Red Train Days...see what you think! Here are the pics from the first Saturday. LMS Pacific 6233 "Duchess of Sutherland" rounds the curve at Powderham with the westbound excursion. A short trip down the coast to Dawlish found this Voyager unit running through... Further south, another Voyager leaves the seawall section of line at Teignmouth. By the second weekend the Voyagers had been taken out of service on this section of line after they found that the units shut themselves down if they ingest seawater into their dynamic brakes... Another Voyager leaves Teignmouth heading for Newton Abbot. The final "red train" of the day was EWS's 66118 leaving Teignmouth westbound with an engineers train. The Wisconsin Central inspired lightning stripe stands out well in this picture. Stay tuned for the second weekends pics folks!
Very good theme, Martyn There is even variety in red locomotives! I loved our family holiday in Teignmouth when Matthew and his brother were little boys Were you standing on that lovely sloping high stone bridge to take the Voyager?
Yep, the Teignmouth seawall pic was from the tall bridge, it's quite a dramatic location (would make a great model, but that's another story! ) The final two I didn't mention, but they were taken from Shaldon bridge, this goes across the river Teign from Teignmouth and you can get some nice shots by walking out onto the bridge a little way. The second weekend's red trains, (and the second red steam loco) will follow in a couple of days folks!
Yeah! It was actually Shaldon where we stayed for our holiday That high bridge on a sharp curve, with canted track is crying out to be modelled I got a few photographs of trains coming through the bridge taken from the sea wall, but they are all on slides
Teignmouth? Where is this? I am unfamiliar with this segment of British geography. Beautiful, with the seawall, reminiscent of the ATSF Surfline. Gorgeous hills.
It is a beautiful bit of the country. This is Devon, in the South Western corner of the UK. If you have a good atlas, look at the south west corner of the UK, and there is a penninsula heading off to the SW below Wales, Devon is the next-to-last county in the penninsula. The main railway line down into this area runs down the estuary of the river Exe from Exeter, then runs at the base of the cliffs along the coast until it reaches the Teign estuary and goes back inland again. It misses out what would be a difficult climb over the hills (and there are enough of them on this route already!) There's a bit of history (and a rough map) at this thread Exeter-Newton Abbot thread where i've been gradually moving down the line to this point.
Well, as promised, here are the red train pics from last Saturday, and first up was the steam special again... This week it was a different Stanier pacific, 6201 "Princess Elizabeth", here it is hurrying through Starcross... ...and I figured a slight glint shot was worth a crack as well! I then walked down to Cockwood, a short distance away where I spent a couple of hours, and what do you know...more red trains!!! A pair of SWT class 159 units (OK so they're not all red....) Due to the Voyager units being taken out of service west of Exeter, a couple of short formed HST sets have been drafted in to the area... There was some big engineering work planned in Cornwall for the Sunday, and several engineers trains passed, here 66149 passes with a handful of spoil wagons and a set of autoballasters. 66206 also went west, dragging two class 60's (60066 and 60039) plus another large rake of empty spoil wagons.
Thanks again Martyn. Those short HST's should have good accelleration The Autoballasters are great looking wagons. We often get some at Peterborough parked in the yard ready for their next job. Must get down there and take some pics.
