1984 ...The Moves part I

21/1/1984

1520 Home to Glasgow 37 191
1650 Glas to Crianlarich 37 085
2000 Crian to Home 37 014

All three of these machines would become top mileage syphons for me, with some special time put into 014 and some long runs, like dundee and back on 191. 085 and 191 were not super great performers, which is probably why they were out so often: they were not thrashable and hence the valve gear and timing chains probably held out longer. 014 had been a heap for a while, but by the summer of 84 it was a really good runner, and of course went on to be one of the eldest mainline locos of the class in 37/0 status.

28/1/84

1520 Home to Glasgow 37 022
1650 Glas to Helensb' Upper 37 081
2020 Hel U to Glasgow 37 011
22:00 Glas C to Paisley 37 092 xb or vb ? GD

Diverse units home after a fairly large drop on the late stranae or Ayr feeder for the 0700 Ayr glasgow. THis formed the "royal scot" and probably went to Ayr due to some BR ScR top brass living there and wanting a fast, comfy train in. However the lack of requirement for 47/4s ( the only diesel with ETH operable from central in 1983) in the area meant that the train would drop fairly enormous NBs at any time as there was no ETH anyway.

37 022 was one of the latter stratford reallocations to ED and not a bad runner

4/2/84

1520 Home to Glasgow 37 110 ex Oban,
1650 Glas to Home 37 081 ft Bill

110 was also a latter drifter from stratford IIRC with 114 also coming our way.

This was obviously my "insect" move after bunking off school or swimming on saturdays. Probably on a cut and shut transcard.

11/2/84

0906 Home to Arrochar 37 188
0945 Arrocahre to Hel U 37 011
1033 Hel U to Arrochar 37 108
1115 Arrochar to Home 37 022
1720 Home to glasgow 37 039
1820 Glas to Ardlui 37 188
2001 Ardlu- Hel 37 014

The latter , presumably with an ETHEL I neglected to bother my arse to write in the wee blue book.

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All these moves seem to have based themselves around ned cards and dark evenings of rumbling up and down the WHL talking crap and eating chips. The times of wandering down the road were most likely to cafes, the bus home or a lift backwards and forwards from my long suffering mother!

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1/3 / 84

1733 Home to Crianlarich 37 190
1907 Crian to Home 37 090

A nice little line with 090 probably a boilered on loan from GD or the likes. THink it may have been vb. 190 was not a patch on 188.

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MYSTEX or Shoppex.

3/3/84

0724 Home one change to Glas C units
0900 Glas to Warrington 86 241
1130 warrington to chester 47 194
1317 Chester to crewe DMU

Apart from some ned spotting in Crewe, this, like many other mystexs could have been a real POS day. But look at the timing! 2 hours thirty to warrington! Hard to find a service which does it so fast today and that was load 8 mark ones back then!

Now what happened next was that we were just waiting about for the return when a very horrid 45/1 crawls in having sprayed a rake of mrk iis on somethign like a bangor to york service with oil or diesel. Waiting in the wings, an immaculate 40 155 whistles like a ghost round the back of the station and DROPS on the service! We jump on it as it stops at warrington and the 40 gives an excellent thrash as he tries to pick up time at the stops and signals on the way.

1645 Chester to Warrington 40 155. 1E16

Why 40s in this condition were ever cut up I do not know as they were far more reliable than 45s or 47s. A rationalisation of the class to later bodies / bogies or better examples of the baldies and splitters could have given Scotland or the west with some good extra passenger locos through to 1986 and track works locos thereafter, as a few did at crewe in 1986.

Upon some excurtiating googling I found that this was 1E16, Bangor to Scarborough, as x-country as it gets ! The loco was taken off at Manchester. http://itsa40.co.uk/84mar.html

The way home also produced some other healthy metal from the un just death row, 85039 awated us at the little platform end loco marshalling point. 1830 home in failing light with a damn good thrash.