wow. Very cool stuff. I know just about zero about Brittish trains. I've actually even ridden some when travelling through England to get to mainland Europe. Are there an good places to get basic info on the English lines? How many major companies etc. Or are you all state owned now like in France and Italy and Swiss railways? It looks like you got some awesome time in at that station. Also noticed that this line is not electrified. You didn't catch and Passenger coaches either. I have to say the thing I love most about euro trains is the variety of passenger coaches and color schemes, especially the international runs. How many cars are in a freight train normally? Here in Denver the trains run easily over 100 cars on coal trains.
Alan, what a great photo essay. However, what I find interesting is that the UK drivers do not acknowledge railfans waving or taking photos. Here, at least in my neck of the woods, almost every engineer will wave, and most will give the horn a toot as they see me.
Sometimes they do wave, Hank. But there are usually 12-15 railfans at Barnetby all day, every day, so the drivers have probably seen them all many times
All our trains are now run by private companies. The main freight operator is EWS, other major ones are Freightliner, GBRailfreight, plus several other smaller ones. Freight train lengths are usually up to thirty-odd vehicles as seen in these pictures. I visited Barnetby as it is one of the premier freight routes in the country, but I did photograph some of the passenger trains. I arrived on the line from Lincoln on a class 153 single unit car which runs approximately a two-hour interval service. Other trains are the Trans-Pennine Express class 158 2-car units between Grimsby and Manchester Airport. Photos to come.
Another coal train with the smaller tippler coal cars. [ September 28, 2005, 10:44 AM: Message edited by: Alan ]
Another Trans Pennine Express heading west. [ September 28, 2005, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: Alan ]
A Freightliner empty coal train approaching. [ September 28, 2005, 10:46 AM: Message edited by: Alan ]
The Freightliner coal cars are the same as the EWS ones. [ September 28, 2005, 11:41 AM: Message edited by: Alan ]
Another of the reasons to visit is the wonderful array of semaphore signals which can be seen in most of the pictures. This small shunt signal caught my eye. The weedy sidings are usually used to park tampers and other track maintenance machines. [ September 28, 2005, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: Alan ]
It was state owned in that fashion till the mid 90's, when the railway went through a privatisation process. A company was set up to manage the infrastructure, passenger operators were franchised, and freight operators work open-access for profit... http://www.rail.co.uk/ukrail/railcomp/towelcm.htm Lists the passenger operators, plus, oddly EWS and Freightliner (the two largest freight operators) but not a couple of freight operators, and lists Docklands Light Railway and London Underground which were never part of BR but not any of the other urban light rail entities... Much less of the UK is than the rest of Europe. London to Scotland via the East and West of the country and electrified, plus various add-ons and suburban electrifications linked into those. South of London the majority of the network is third rail electrified, and there is a small amount of that in Liverpool as well. The remainder of the country is internal combustion.... The heaviest will have 30+ 102 ton wagons, but lengths/weights vary a lot depending on traffic and route, we have much less 'loose' carload traffic over here compared to the US and mainland Europe. Freight over here has to keep out of the way of a busy passenger railway, so they need a power-weight ratio that lets them fit in between other trains. All the trains shot so far should be able to manage 60mph over most of their route, empties (large wagons) of the freightliner/ews coal trains you'll see later (i'm sure Alan will have shot some) are rated at 75mph. They are also *expected* to run at these speeds (where the routes allow for them), delaying other trains will cause penalties for the company that caused the problem. That's not neccesarily a big problem in this specific area, as it only has a slightly better than hourly each way passenger service if it's the same as when I visited, plus as you can see plenty of track capacity to play with... [ August 06, 2005, 03:26 AM: Message edited by: Martyn Read ]
Barnetby East signalbox controls this end of the station. [ September 28, 2005, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: Alan ]
