Northern Trains

The November meeting of the Solent branch was a series of videos filmed by branch member Philip Haines under the title “Northern Trains”, this being used to refer to the north of England rather than the Northern franchise. Beginning at Doncaster, we progressed to Leeds, Dewsbury, Manchester (Piccadilly and Victoria)  Bolton, Preston and Carlisle looking at typical services to be seen over the past ten years. Much had changes in that period, for example the loss of coal traffic for the power stations in Yorkshire and Fiddlers Ferry,  HSTs being replaced by Azumas, and Class 195 diesel units and Class 331 electrics replacing older units such as Pacers. However, there were scenes from 10 years ago that can still be seen such as the use of Sprinter and 156s on local services.

Night time filming at Carlisle illustrated pairs of Class 86s, Class 86 + 90, pairs of Class 90s on Freightliner workings, Class 88s on Daventry - Mossend intermodal trains,  and Royal Mail Class 325s on services to and from Warrington

Philip’s work frequently took him to Bolton so he was able to record the changes there as electrification of the line from Manchester to Preston for Trans Pennine Express services took place and emus such as 319s and 350/4s appeared.

A notable aspect of Phillip’s videos was the large number of liveries he illustrated, with him laying claim to have counted 70 when he prepared his notes.

Our thanks to Philip for an enjoyable evening that showed once again that common scenes today should be captured on camera as something is bound to change in a few years.