East Midlands Day Ranger
The aim of this outing was for the Merseyside, Cheshire and North Wales branch to make the best possible use of an East Midlands Day Ranger ticket in deepest midwinter.
To this end five members gathered at Crewe from various starting locations in the vicinity and set off for Derby on a two-car East Midlands DMU bound for Newark Castle.
Two more members meanwhile braved cancellations and subsequently packed trains to approach Derby from Malvern in the West Midlands via Birmingham New Street.
The magnificent seven thus converged at Derby and embarked upon a voyage of subtlety and no little interest which had been devised by their spiritual leader and mentor, who was sadly prevented from taking part due to ill-health.
The first stage of the journey from Derby was aboard a comfortable and speedy EMR unit bound for St Pancras, which we leapt off at Leicester, having noted the various interesting locos stabled just outside the station.
A quick dash over the bridge at Leicester took us to a more calm and sedate trip on a 170 DMU all the way east to Peterborough, an East Coast Main Line and freight metropolis if ever there was one.
There we remained for about an hour and a quarter, sampling the delights of LNER, EMR, Lumo, Hull Trains, Grand Central and Thameslink, and various freight offerings. But the highlight was probably 37901 “Mirrlees Pioneer” (see photo below) hauling a set of Eastern Rail Services coaches and a DVT.
We left Peterborough on a Liverpool-bound 158 DMU up the ECML to Grantham, then branching west to Nottingham where we all alighted amid a plethora of 170 units and proceeded upstairs to do some tram spotting on the Nottingham Express Transit before once again parting our ways, with the two Malvern members taking a Cardiff-bound DMU as far as Birmingham New Street where chaos ensued as their final link back to Malvern had been cancelled, and the five from the north west taking a DMU back to Crewe without mishap.
All in all it was an excellent day out despite the grey overcast weather and we did our leader proud in his absence!
Click the link below for a list of observations....
