A trip down to Bletchley this morning and a Thunderbird in the carriage sidings again. This time I had my binoculars with me and despite the foliage I did manage to identify today's visitor as 57301 Scott Tracy. Unfortunately the views were not good enough to get a decent picture. 57301 is seen here on an altogether brighter day on 14 November 2004 when it was the Thunderbird at Milton Keynes Central.In all there are 16 57/3s operated by Virgin Trains and all are appropriately named after Thunderbird characters. 57307 is particularly distinctive - named Lady Penelope - and with pink nameplates. Some suggestions have been made that the red part of the livery should also have been pink!
Also noted while I was in Bletchley was EWS 66155 using the Bletchley Flyover. Until a couple of years ago this was an extremely rare occurrence, the line having been out of use for some time. Currently the line here extends to Swanbourne Sidings and is used as a run round and reversing point for freight coming off the Bedford to Bletchley line.
Yesterday Grand Central began its operation between Sunderland and London King's Cross. Initially, using just one refurbished HST set, the company will have three when full services begin during the second half of January. One HST will be a spare at Heaton CS but the other two will be required to cover the daily diagrams of three return journeys between Sunderland and the capital. They have a rather good web site here, which includes a gallery showing the HSTs undergoing their refurbishment and repaint into the attractive Grand Central livery.
This coming weekend I am hoping to take a visit to the new St Pancras International and Thameslink stations as I have not had the opportunity as yet. This will also be an opportunity to visit Kings Cross to see the Grand Central and National Express East Coast operations, the latter having recently taken over from GNER.
2 comments:
I've noticed "Thunderbird" engines at several locations over the years, such as Nuneaton and Crewe stations. I think they should expand to using "Star Wars", "Star Trek" and "Battlestar Galactica" ship names!
I can't remember if I mentioned this in the post but Virgin's fleet of 16 Thunderbird locos - 57/3s - are all named after Thunderbird characters. Crewe and Nuneaton are likely locations to regularly see Virgin 57/3s particularly at Nuneaton when the WCML to Birmingham is closed and Pendolino's have to be dragged to and from Birmingham NS or Wolverhampton. Other operators use Thunderbirds - South West Trains have two Class 73s and National Express East Coast use EWS locos for Thunderbird duties.
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