Avanti West Coast
HEAVY rain and flooding caused a number of AWC services to be cancelled or terminated mid-way through their journeys on Sunday, July 23. Among the altered services was 1M10, worked by Class 390 ‘Pendolino’ No. 390157, which departed from Glasgow Central at 09.34 bound for London Euston. However, this service only went as far south as Lancaster where it was terminated. The unit later returned to Glasgow as 1Z37, departing from Lancaster at 12.36. It then formed the 1M15 departing from Glasgow at 14.52 for Euston via Birmingham New Street.
West Coast Main Line services were seriously disrupted on Friday, July 28, when Network Rail Stoneblower No. DR80301 working from Crewe PAD to Slateford failed immediately north of Abington Loop. It was rescued by the 4M30/19.07 Grangemouth to Daventry IRFT and pushed into the loop. The rescue train was itself delayed by 70 minutes at Abington while its locomotive was acting as the rescue engine.
As a consequence, the 1S82/16.30 Euston to Glasgow operated by No. 390136 was held at Beattock waiting for the line to clear, while the 9S85/15.16 Euston to Glasgow operated by No. 390039 was held near Lockerbie and the 1S90/17.30 Euston to Glasgow held at Carlisle. Delays of up to 119 minutes were recorded on the Glasgow arrivals.
New Class 805 No. 805002 was delivered from Merchant Park, Newton Aycliffe to Oxley by Class 56 No. 56081 on July 24, followed by No. 805004 hauled by Class 66 No. 66713 on July 31.
Testing of the class continues on a regular basis with No. 805001 running on Tuesday, August 8 from Oxley Depot, Wolverhampton (5Q30/08.08) to Carlisle and back (5Q31/11.51), and again the following day.
LNER
AT 13.45 on July 4, the LNER 1S12 Azuma service from London King’s Cross to Edinburgh was held near Birtley Junction, just south of Newcastle, due to a bridge strike by a lorry. The service resumed at 14.13 after Network Rail engineers inspected the damage. Already running 10 minutes late, arrival at Newcastle was 41 minutes down. Final arrival at Edinburgh was at 15.49, 42 minutes late.
The same journey (from Welwyn North to Edinburgh) was attempted again by our correspondent on July 24 but met with greater disruption due to a fatality at Stevenage. All movements were suspended at 10.00 while the emergency services attended, but although information online indicated services would not resume until 13.00, trains actually began moving around 11.00.
Taking whatever LNER service was available, a change was made at Doncaster for an Edinburgh train but en-route this was terminated at Newcastle due to crew unavailability. The next available LNER train was full and impossible to board, so station staff advised waiting for the following train. This had plenty of seating, and Edinburgh was eventually reached at 17.43, 133 minutes later than planned.
It is reported that on Friday, July 14, Azuma No. 800201 ran from Finsbury Park to London Liverpool Street as part of a project to assess feasibility of diverting services during planned disruption or significant engineering works on the operator’s route into King’s Cross. Using diesel power, it left Finsbury Park at 00.27 and ran via Canonbury West Junction onto the North London Line, then to Hackney Wick and passed to the west of Stratford to join the Great Eastern Main Line into Liverpool Street where it arrived at 01.00.
Great Western Railway
CLASS 37 No. 37608 headed north through Flax Bourton on July 26 hauling off-lease set GW11 formed of Nos. 48131+48132+48133+49111 on the 5L46 Plymouth Laira depot to Ely Papworth sidings for storage.
Abellio Scotrail
THE Carmont accident in August 2020 resulted in three fatalities including that of the driver. Following the failure of ScotRail to take action to improve the safety of its HSTs the train drivers’ union ASLEF had indicated its drivers were planning to boycott the
