Off the beaten track

[33011]

During my early teens i used to spend most of my school holidays at my home town station at Eastleigh. I remember the usual loco types classes 08/09/33/47/56/73 but quite often something different would turn up. Class 45/0s were almost daily visitors on weekdays working in on the freight from Severn Tunnel. I remember one afternoon 45052 waiting to leave the yard with the freight back to Severn Tunnel as 45144 passed through with a stone train for Fareham. That was the only time i saw two class 45's at Eastleigh on the same day and also 45/1 were very rare. Another time I saw 20084/209 on a freightliner. Class 37's would pay the odd visit on the Yeoman stone trains although they did have a booked turn on the stonetrain before the 56's took over I believe.37's did become a common sight again on the Hamworthy Steel and the Fratton then changed to Totton coal trains then quite a few ended up allocated to Eastleigh in the end.There was about a 2 month space where the coal train mentioned above was worked by class 58's a type also to end up allocated to Eastleigh. What light work the 58's made hauling a heavy coal train made uf 3 or 4 HEA wagons.Have you seen any loco's in unusal places? perhaps you went somewhere different to escape the usual classes you see day in day out and low and behold that's the day one turns up.

[Dave Rowland]

Yes! 7th March 1985. I was at Reading, when the York-Portsmouth Harbour (via Guildford) train ran into Platform 5; it was a Monday-Friday service, ALWAYS worked by a 47 throughout, and today it was hauled by 45131. Of course, that was the train I decided to get back to Pompey, rather than go back via Eastleigh! Never saw it happen before, or after.

[33011]

I think i would've done the same. Reading was alway good in the summer you never knew what was going to drop. As there were no mobile phones etc back then it seemed to be more fun waiting to see what turned up then running like hell to get a ticket before the train left.