Eastleigh Area 27-03-04
The original idea for this trip was to go to Eastleigh to see the penultimate Class 56 Railtour - The Sarum flyer, as by the end of March 2004 EWS will be withdrawing all of their class 56's. The other tour apparently leaving Bristol for York I believe will be Class 56 double headed through out. As opposed to one 56 there and a different 56 back.
Anyhow back to Saturdays tour. I found out that the 56 was not due in to Eastleigh till at least 17:30 leaving me a good number of hours to kill. So I decided to get some pictures of the layout of the following Stations, Totton, Redbridge, Millbrook and Southampton Parkway, for my Waterloo - Weymouth route using Auran's Trainz Rail simulator 2004. Unfortunately Redbridge and Soton Parkway will have to wait for a later date to be photographed. I started off at Totton and
eventually worked my way up to Eastleigh later in the afternoon. Heres the pics of my day. Out of the 50 odd megs worth of pics and 40 odd megs worth of movies this is what I have chosen to describe the trip. I took my Pratika 35mm camera and my Sony Digital video camera as well am my Sony Cybershot digi Still camera. Its the first time I have taken my Digital video camera and not even used it!!! The movies I shot are not particularly good as it was a rather cloudy and dull day. anyhow on to the Pics.
66542 goes through Totton with a rake of Intermodal wagons. This is the first time I have seen this working. It seems as though they go down to Marchwood military port and run round then come back to Millbrook or Maritime.
About an hour later I was getting my self acquainted with the surroundings of Millbrook, and 66542 came back and promptly decided to run past the UP Fast Main 4 aspect ( at yellow) . It then started shunting the wagons back into Millbrook container terminal whilst still on the up fast line!!! Note the lights of the GPL signal. The old GPL's are now being replaced by newer Fibre Optic signals.
Another shot of 66542 now off the mainline and in Millbrook Container Terminal. I thought the loco was going to take charge of one of the full container loads, but It came out about 5 minutes later and headed wrong line back to Southampton Maritime.
During my stay at Millbrook after hearing at the time what sounded like a Class 66 horn and frantically looking for it 66049 popped off the Southampton Western Docks Branch and proceeded to head in my direction.
Another shot of 66049 rounding the bend and approaching the release signal.
I was expecting the 66 to take the diverging route over to the left to join the mainline on the up but to my surprise it didn't. Possibly because a Class 442 Wessex Electric unit was cleared to pass through on the up at about 90mph!! The 66 got a Caution and waited at the next signal for a few minutes. By the time I had caught my train and got to the place where it was it had carried on with its journey.
The Previous 3 shots were taken at Southampton Central. the first 2 with the Praktica 35mm and the last one with the Sony Cybershot. The 56 was running some 40 minutes down. it got to Southampton at just after 2pm Saturday afternoon. From the look of it on the train, the tour was not sold out. Also it was supposed to be 2 class 56's but they could not attach the jumper cables between both locos so the other one was failed.
With "Gridiron" displayed in the leading Cab, 56095 is inexplicably passed onto the up slow line on the return journey to Finsbury Park. Just seconds before this shot was taken a class 170 had just cleared us northwards on the down line ( heading to Reading).
A bonus for me as well on Saturday was Southwest trains newly delivered class 170 DMU 170392, Awaiting to depart from Platform 3 at Eastleigh. Also note the hole below the number. There is infact a camera installed. Whats it for? well I have been told quiet possibly for Driver only operation as it was on the South Central by mistake previously before being handed to Southwest trains. Whether this is true or not I am sure.
Finally and by no means least. A bit of track building at Eastleigh. Yep it looks as though there are going to be at least 2 more sidings on this side of the Virtual quarry. As well as a Concrete sleeper manufacturing plant. The Sleeper plant makes sense as Long Welded Rail is already made on site at Eastleigh up in the North Yard. Apparently this is to coincide with GBRf's infrastructure contract for the Southern region in utilizing its fleet of Class 73's on Infrastructure work around the Southern region.
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