Saturday 10th August 1996 "The Multiple Marauder"
Having moved north from London to Cheshire over a year before, I was somewhat out of position to get involved in the ongoing restoration of our loco 33111 at St.Leonards, Hastings. In the early days of owning the loco I would often spend my Saturdays, or even whole weekends, helping to restore the loco at St.Leonards Depot. After moving to Cheshire I then came up with the idea of forming a Railtour Company, through the 33/1 Preservation Group of which I was a founding member, to raise funds for the loco's restoration and have some good days out to boot!
Thus 33111 Charters was born.
Over a few brainstorming sessions in The Albion, Crewe, under the glare of Big Al, the Landlord, we came up with a plan. We needed to run a tour that at least made money, no good trying to raise funds for the Group then actually costing it money! To that end I decided that we would have to do something different if we wanted to get that result, something to entice the residents of the North West to book on the train.
To that end I decided we would go for 3 x 31 locos in Multiple, taking advantage of the ability of any class fitted with the Blue Star multiple working system, to multi with up to 2 other locos with the same system. Previously this would have been a costly move as the Railway Drivers Union's insisted that this would require a 2nd Driver on the inside loco of the 3 due to safety considerations. In reality this was only a paper exercise, flexing the Union's muscles, with no reality in fact on loco's fitted with fire bottle safety systems. This had recently been rescinded by the Union's (probably thinking no-one would be silly enough to want to do it anyway!).
I was different, however - we wouldn't just do it with 3x31's but follow it up with 3x33's in Multi on the same train!
As for a name for the Tour, Multiple would feature & we were going into Anglia where the Viking's were very active back in the day, raiding & pillaging towns & villages . Neath came up with "Multiple Marauder" as the Tours name.
The tour would be advertised as run by 33111 Charters & I would do all the bookings, seating plans etc from my home in Nantwich.
The reason it would be a single class 31 to Crewe for the 3 in Multi forward was to avoid getting lots of people in the North West just wanting to do Preston to Crewe on part fares to do 3x31 in multi (a first for a Railtour) - to get this they had to commit to going at least as far as London Victoria & return thus guaranteeing our revenue!
I would return home from a day working in Rail House, Crewe, to find a deluge of envelopes on the doormat - sometimes making it a struggle to get into my residence! The number of bookings coming in made it clear that we would, indeed, stand a fair chance of making a profit from the tour - and get a good day out to boot!
Although I timed & diagrammed all aspects of the tour (I worked in the EWS Charter section at Rail House, Crewe) I had never done a seating plan before so enlisted the help of Mr Kapur, a close friend and someone who had been involved in hundreds of tours through his job at Hertfordshire Railtours - he gave me a few pointers over the phone.
A few weeks before the operating date I had a fair idea of the seating plan, I had also coincided the tour with the GBBF (Great British Beer festival) held at Kensington Olympia as another source of revenue for the tour - a lot of people wished to visit the Beer festival but a trip like that took a lot of planning. Why not just travel with us, drink all the way to London, enjoy the Beer Fest - then drink all the way back!
This gives you an idea that this would not just be another tour where only the loco's would be of interest - it would be a travelling Beer Festival! We were all fed up of current tour operators not providing the beers most Cranks this day and age desired onboard - indeed some Steam tours around this time would still be bereft of beer on board for the whole day out!
Front cover of tour leaflet
The day prior to the Tour me, Pinker & Betty had taken annual leave, we drove up to Carnforth as we would be doing the ECS from Steamtown Carnforth to Preston at 0525 Saturday morning. On arrival at Steamtown we checked over the rake of Stock provided - it was all formed exactly as requested but IN REVERSE! This would completely blow my seating plan out of the water...
After some discussion it was agreed that Steamtown would remarshal the stock to meet our requirements (it was their error) - due to restrictions on Shunt movements you have to move 2 to 3 coaches at a time, via the Headshunt at the north end of Steamtown's Yard.
These manoeuvres were carried out by 03196 - we had a merry time shunting to & fro behind the Wee Beastie I can tell you.
Sometime during the afternoon we were made aware of the Watford Train Crash that had occurred the previous evening. I rang work & was told Control were making arrangements to divert the tour from Nuneaton via Coventry, Banbury & Reading on the outward. There was an outside chance of the WCML reopening for the return, if not the same diversion would be required.
In these times of mobile phones you forget how easily you could miss important developments like this.
As for our Customers, we were of course incommunicado to them and they were of course trying to find out if the tour would still run at all! Luckily I had made it a rule that we only ran Charter's on days that Pathfinder were not so that their Staff could join us on our tours and drink & be merry like us and their other customers normally were on their trips. To this end we allotted them a free Compo on each trip - and it's a good job we did as they set themselves up to answer calls from our customers from Thursday night & all day Friday, keeping everyone as informed as possible. Thanks again Chaps!
Then off to the pub for JUST a couple of pints (I would be Train Manager tomorrow) followed by a visit to the Chippy & a relatively early night, bearing in mind the 0400ish start to get onto the stock in the morning.
Come the day of the tour and our loco through to Crewe was 31514 (31414 with the ETH removed).
I have to say the loco performed faultlessly on load 11, including a non-stop run through Manchester Piccadilly which I had deliberately planned - after all most of us have spent far more time at Picc over the years than we may have really wanted. After the pick up at Stockport we were onward to Crewe to pick up our other 2 class 31's.
One of our members, Dave Fry, had produced this excellent insert for the tour leaflet, taking into account the affects of the Watford train crash.
Thanks to the sterling efforts of 31514 we arrived at Crewe station 3 minutes early! Here we not only picked up a lot more of our Customers but also 2 more Class 31's. 31308 & 31271 were the additional locos. All looked good so we set off towards London. We didn't get very far...
To Multi locos in the Blue Star configuration, you should couple up all the loco's, shut them all down & then plug in the Multiple working cables. It seems the Shunter at Crewe had left 31514 running, net result was at least one of the locos was trying to head North while the other 2 correctly tried to go South! We pulled up outside Crewe Carriage Shed & the Driver soon got the loco's configured correctly. It was at this point that any doubting Punters who may have indulged in a bet as to when the 31's might fail would have realised they had wasted their cash!
A great run down the WCML to Nuneaton where our diversion due to the Watford situation started, we headed for Coventry then down via Leamington Spa and Banbury to Didcot. Due to Control having to cobble drivers together for us due to the diversion, we were having numerous Driver changes on route!
Here at Didcot I looked on in dismay, the forward Driver, though only working the train forward to Reading, was one of the notorious "Reading Wrecker" Spoon Goon's - not only did I not know how people of this ilk could be employed on the railway but I knew this individual had a personal hatred for class 31's (very much "bowl out" loco's for class 47 Bashers in the Reading area back in the day).
He was smiling as he got in the front cab - what's going to happen here?
We then covered Didcot to Reading, a distance of 17.5 miles, start to stop in 15.2minutes: A start-stop average of 69mph - we apparently reached 96mph between Pangbourne & Tilehurst & some of the 31's involved were restricted to 60mph...
Unfortunately these extraordinary speeds left 31514 feeling unwell, with smoke pouring from at least one traction motor & the engine room. Our forward driver, Chris Guntripp, had a fire extinguisher in his hand and looked over to me "Poodle - what do we do?" I replied "Jump onto the Ballast Chris - and use that extinguisher!"
The station Fitter then got involved, he used a crowbar to isolate a couple of motor's on 31514 & we eventually continued with said loco DIT. Unfortunately with the enforced diversion & loco problems we were now running over TWO hours late!
We staggered forward to Kensington Olympia, where the dozen or so Beer festival visitors alighted - they asked me what time to expect departure after such a late arrival & I said aim for 60minutes late (wishful thinking!) & I will ensure the train doesn't leave without you.
Here our higher powered Southern loco's were patiently awaiting us.
33207, 33051 and 33030 await at Kensington Olympia to re-engine the 'Multiple Marauder' railtour. Photo used with courtesy of Duffield (Steve Thorpe)
We had advertised for (& requested) 3 x 33/0 to remove the chance of the Railtour regular, 33207, being fixed for the train. On the day, despite our best efforts, we found the 3 locos were 33030 / 33051 & of course 33207!
I have to say I have hardly ever seen a Railtour so well patronised as ours upon leaving Kenny O!
Some of the coaches were as wedged as a busy Network Day. I think the £25 pay-on-the day for triple headed Crompton's on a six hour run around Anglia, some of which was new track for class 33's, appealed to a lot of Punters!
As discussed we eventually reached Newmarket, still 2 hours late, to make our futile attempt at a photo-stop!
It had already been a tumultuous day, I couldn't drink any of the many Beers on offer as still fulfilling the role of Train Manager - I think IF I'd had some Beer I would have made a better decision & waved the proposed photo-stop to recover some time. (I remedied this on our next Tour by standing down on the return at Peterborough & rather quickly getting through a gallon of beer twixt there & Kings X - even better on the Rhins & Machar to Stranraer my Stewards badge was removed there so I could drink for the next 450 miles!)
Enough of that, onwards towards Ipswich & the run back to London down the GE mainline.
With the 3 Crompton's on the front power certainly wasn't an issue, good Thrash & Clag throughout.
Obviously nothing further could possibly go wrong - of course it can it's the Railway after all!
33207 (the loco we hadn't wanted on the train in the first place!) gave up the Ghost and shut down at Chelmsford - low Coolant pressure apparently.
Once again we start with THREE booked loco's but finish with TWO!
Obviously nothing further could possibly go wrong - of course it can it's the Railway after all!
We sailed through Maryland towards Stratford & the North London line.... or we would have done if the Signaller hadn't decided to route us into London Liverpool Street instead!
So we propelled, with 2 & a bit locos & 11 coaches, the 36 or more Chains back from Platform 9 at Stratford to Maryland where this time we took the correct route to serenely arrive into Platform 10 at Stratford for our booked Traincrew change.
Obviously nothing further could possibly go wr.... Sod that - where are the forward Traincrew!
Maybe us being UNDER 2 hours late (we'd somehow made up 10 minutes) had thrown them, so we went forward to Channelsea Jn for a half hour wait in the evening sunshine while our new traincrew walked to the train from wherever they'd been hiding!
33030+33051+33207 head into the sunset somewhere on the North London Line. Photo used with courtesy of Duffield (Steve Thorpe)
It's easy this Train Manager lark. Not on this Tour it wasn't, I was in a right Tizzy I can tell you!
Anyway we already had the news that the WCML would stay firmly closed so we could "look forward" to the diversion all the way round via Reading, Banbury & Coventry to Nuneaton.
I have to say at this point Res Charter Control had done a sterling job for us, they had worked their magic (& probably called in some favours) to keep us going all day. Other than the hiccup at Stratford you wouldn't have known we had been massively diverted & delayed at all.
We also had info that 31271 & 31308 WOULD still be working our return Northward, unlike some of our passengers who were expecting a Big Red Duff from Kenny O!
No problem at Kenny O for our Beer Fest passengers, I expect they had been nipping back in for an extra pint or two while keeping an eye on the departures board at the station. We were just the 2 hours & 1 minute late back into Kenny O!
We re-engined, this time it was the 33's turn to limp off towing the errant 207. We departed at 2115 vice 1900...
Off into the night, the 31's put in a solid performance on our wonderful diversion via the GW mainline & Banbury, we made up roughly 30 minutes to Crewe compared with the outward journey.
It was time to say goodbye to the Class 31's, due to our late running our booked return route via Stockport & Piccadilly was closed for Engineering Work so we swopped to 47736 and ran via the WCML, dropping any Stockport punters off at Warrington BQ (at 0123!) for road transport forward (Sorry!), we finally got to Preston the wrong side of 0200.
Conclusions: Try not to run your first ever Railtour just after a major Train Crash!
From having to remarshal the stock on the Friday with the class 03, right through to ending up in Preston in the early hours of Sunday morning behind a class 47, the Tour was a Riot!
The riots included the 2 loco failures (I wouldn't blame the 31 but I WOULD blame that crate 33207!), both locos getting at least stored out of traffic (if not eventually withdrawn) after we had used & abused them. How many Tours can say that!
Thanks to all the members of our Class 33/1 Preservation Group who either Stewarded, ran the Buffet or the Beer Stand on this LONG trip! (At least some of you COULD drink the Beer...)
I leave you with the story of two lads who boarded the tour at Preston at 0644 Saturday morning. We were still finishing setting up the Bar when they popped in leaving Preston "Is it possible to have a couple of Pint's? We know you've said the Bar doesn't open until Crewe?" Men of my own persuasion, of course we served them their Beers. "Where are you off to Lads?" I asked. "The GBBF beer festival at Kenny O" came the reply.
After we left Nuneaton at just before midnight the same two lads asked "any Beer left" while we were dismantling the Bar. I managed to tilt a couple of polypins & oblige, the last we had on board. "You lads certainly know how to stock a Bar, you won't believe how much we've drunk today!"
Praise indeed, we made sure our other 2 future Charters were well stocked too!
Cheers Poodle
Brilliant story, thanks for putting it down in words!
ReplyDeleteI wonder how much of that would still be possible today.