Visit to West & South London

Five hardy souls braved it to the wilds of London for this RCTS fixture. We met at the appointed time of 11am under the famous clock at Waterloo station with our rolled up umbrellas and copies of the FT under our arms for easier identification. All members had enjoyed untroubled trips from their outposts in the North West and West Midlands, which certainly made a change from some of our recent fixtures.

Before heading west from Waterloo we made a small diversion east on the unique self-contained Waterloo & City tube line, which was built in 1898 to enable gents commuting into Waterloo to get directly to the City. It is only 1.47 miles long and the end to end journey takes just 4 minutes.

Arriving at Bank station we then took a DLR ride out to Limehouse for a quick peruse of the class 357 units on the C2C line (and lots of DLRs), then it was back to Waterloo by the same route.

After a brief lunchtime sojourn outside Waterloo station we took a train to Wimbledon, where we saw no Wombles, but did see a rapid succession of units and Croydon Tramlink trams. We then proceeded back by train for the main event of the day at the manically frenetic Clapham Junction. As the reader will have surmised, this was very much a unit spotting day, in particular the new class 701 units. The occasional freight does come through, but only rarely, and we only saw two during our afternoon vigil, a class 69 (69004) and a class 60 (60029). As for units, the classes sampled included 158, 159, 377, 378, 387, 444, 450, 458, 700, 701 of course, and a solitary new London Overground 710. But no class 455s with four numbers, they seem to have all gone.

It remains to say that the weather was perfect and a great day out was enjoyed by all participants!