Plymouth At Last!

October 26th saw the event we have all been waiting for  - D1015 went "home" to Plymouth.

For the first time D1015 departed from Birmingham New St rather than London Paddington at the start of the journey.

A rather cautious start out of New St and via Five Ways followed as there were a lot of leaves on the line.  After stopping at Barnt Green (is this a first for a "wizzo"?) we descended the Lickey Bank and turned off the main line for Worcester.  Along the branch to Droitwich, Champion was opened up and started to entertain the punters.  There were rather a lot of these as the train was loaded to 12 coaches, and the tour was a sellout.  We rejoined the mainline at Abbotswood some 20 minutes early, and accelerated rapidly  - 90 MPH at Ashchurch, before arriving at Cheltenham Spa, where we waited time for 25 minutes.

Departing from Cheltenham, we avoided Gloucester and there followed some high speed running and a superb climb to Wickwar tunnel.  Every window in the front coach was open to a) enjoy the Maybach's at full power and b) to let the heat out as the ETH generator appeared to be putting all its efforts into the first coach - about gas mark 7 I think.

At Bristol we turned onto the Bath line and thereafter the Westbury line.  From Bath we climbed through Bathampton and Trowbridge and here I thought D1015 really put up a great performance as we swung around the curves with the long train trailing behind, the sound of the engines reverberating back off the walls.  We then rolled through Westbury before accelerating through the "desert".

Unlike the Paignton trip we were checked before Taunton, so no high speed run through, but the climb to Whiteball was excellent, made even more interesting by the fact the "King" 6024 had passed through a few minutes earlier and the front coach filled with a mixture of diesel and steam exhaust.

After changing crew at Exeter we once more traversed the "sea wall" at Dawlish, although compared to the Paignton run this was quite sedate.  However all this was simply the "warm up act" for what was to follow.  We slowed on the approach to Newton Abbott before the power handle was pushed to full and we stormed through the station with literally hundreds of photographers recording our progress.

The climb to Dainton was so good it was slightly disappointing - no fireworks just full power for the whole climb, slowing to about 30MPH as we entered the tunnel.  We descended the other side of the bank and slowed as we entered the middle road at Totnes - then full power was applied and we stormed through the station to attack the very stiff climb of Rattery.  This really was good with the sound of the engines echoing off the hills we hammered up the hill - all too soon we were over the top and into the single bore of Tigley tunnel.

We passed slowly by D1015's old home at Laira, and a few depot staff came out to pay their respects before reversing the train at Plymouth Friary (involving an 09 back to the station), so D1015 arrived at Plymouth North Rd on the back of the train!

An excellent run back to Bristol ensued (non stop) with a very tight schedule of 69 minutes from Exeter for the 74 miles to Bristol.

As D1015 unhooked at Bristol in the drizzle a spontaneous round of appluase ensued with the loco heading off into the night, light engine to Old Oak Common.

As Welli used to say "after the lord mayor's show comes the dustcart" and so it was with 47733 backing onto the train we boarded and settled down for the unevntful run home.

After a few minutes something quite amazing happened - every mobile phone in the coach started ringing - there was some "gen"! - A Bristol-Paddington HST had failed and D1015 was being called to assist!!!

It turns out that a service train had diesel hydraulic traction for the first time since 1977 as D1015 hauled the defective HST from Wooton Bassett to Swindon (see pics below).  There was some debate about whether it should work the train forward to Paddington (I know, I can't believe this either), but the train was eventually caped.  Again quoting Mr Rollason "I knew it, It was bound to happen!!".

As I said at the time "That's it, I am finished!".