March 8, 2023

Between planned trips to get termini for my Freedom Pass Project, I enjoy days out doing more general trainspotting and photography. I took 5 trips out and about in late February. I twice visited Stratford in East London. Stratford is always busy with regular passenger services to East Anglia and it sees lots of freight services to the ports of Harwich and Felixstowe along with other locations. There are also some unusual workings – one such that I photographed was 47749 ‘City of Truro’ hauling East Midlands Railway unit 360118…

…This was to return the unit, after maintenance and a repaint into EMR colours at the Siemens facility in Northampton, back to EMR’s depot at Cricklewood. A delivery that entails travelling south from Northampton on the Euston mainline to Primrose Hill; traversing the North London Line eastwards to Stratford; picking up the line northwards towards South Tottenham; then joining the Gospel Oak – Barking line westwards to Junction Road Junction in Tufnell Park; finally joining the Midland mainline north to Cricklewood. Quite a tortuous route!

Almost all the Greater Anglia services through Stratford are now in the hands of the Class 720’s Only a few of the old Class 321 units survive now and their days of service are nearly at an end. Here’s 321323 running through platform 10a…

…in tandem with 321313.

Another location that was visited twice in February was Alexandra Palace. I was surprised there, on an early morning visit, by two freight workings – usually there are very few freights and they tend to pass in a cluster around midday. I checked and found that one is a new working related to the HS2 construction work and the other was a variation of the usual timetable. So I decided to revisit and try to and photograph them. The HS2 spoil train didn’t run on the day of my second visit but I caught up with the southbound Peterborough West Yard to Bow service in the hands of DB Schenker’s 66084…

…This is often referred to as the Plasmor service because it carries their specialised building materials down to their depot in Bow.

Alexandra Palace may lack freight services but it makes up for that with a lot of high speed passenger services to the East midlands, the North East and Scotland. Here’s a Hull Trains service picking up speed as it heads out of London…

…This is one of the Hitachi AT-300 units in the ‘800’ series – specifically 802303. The Class 802 version are bi-mode, operating on 25kV and having diesel engines for sections of their route that are not electrified. The future may see the diesel engines replaced by batteries if trials planned by the manufacturer and other operators prove successful.

I often pass through London Bridge – a station served by Thameslink, Southern and Southeastern trains. It is a busy station even in the middle of the day. Here is a Southeastern Class 707 unit…

…on platform 6. There are 30 of these units that were originally delivered to South West Trains. I wrote about the long running saga of the bid to replace the ageing Class 455 units over on South Western Railway as long ago as last February. At the time, around half of the 707 fleet were still being used by South Western rather than being transferred to Southeastern. A year on and nothing has changed! The 455’s still run many of South Western Railway’s suburban services assisted by the remaining 707’s and some Class 450’s. Their replacement Class 701’s? – They’re still sitting on the ‘Naughty Step’…