Tracks - Railway Photographs and Links - England
Named EMU 1498 Farringford at Lymington Pier Station
Lymington Pier Station serves the ferry for the Isle of Wight, and the rigging of the ferry boat can just be seen behind the train.
See also The Lymington Branch Line.
Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway locomotive No 5 - Hercules
On my last trip to the UK, I had planned to make a visit to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway on the way back to Dover to catch the ferry. After a week of lovely weather, conditions deteriorated and I was caught up in bad traffic on the A 27. I arrived at Dymchurch just in time to photograph the last trains in each direction, with just about enough light to get a reasonable picture.
Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway locomotive No 14 - Captain Howey
Locomotive No 14 has been named 'Captain Howey' after the founder of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway.
Class 170 DMU at Romsey, Hampshire, England
It is funny how some railway journeys stick in the mind. I have vague memories of catching a steam express from King's Cross as a child. Then there was the time my wife and I caught the last train from Bath to Romsey. Passenger accomodation was a single Mk I compartment coach tacked onto the back of a parcels train. On a warm July evening we had had a meal and a pint or two in a pub in Bath, then we settled back in a compartment to watch the lights slide into the twilight as the train climbed out of the city. There was the cab ride along the Kowloon - Canton railway, through the inky blackness of Beacon Hill tunnel, and out into the sunshine alongside the Shing Mun river... But the journey the photograph above recalls goes back to when I used to catch a train from Templecombe to Southampton on an almost daily basis. In those days the service between Templecombe and Salisbury was operated by a class 50 diesel electric locomotive and a rake of Mark II coaches; the Salisbury to Southampton service comprised a "Hampshire" DEMU set. Normally on the return the DEMU would leave Southampton towards Bournemouth then take the branch to Romsey at Redbridge junction. The "Hampshire" DEMU had a single compartment behind the driver's cab at one end with no corridor connection. I found that if I got in this compartment, and, at stations, ruffled my hair up a bit and leant out of the window, very few people would ask me to move so they could share the compartment. Ah, the Englishman's dream - a railway carriage compartment to himself! Anyway, on this particular day it was unusually hot and the points had siezed at Redbridge. Thus the train reversed to Redbridge station where it was announced that it would run non - stop to Romsey via Southampton, Eastleigh and the (then) Eastleigh - Romsey freight line. And I had the compartment to myself! What a wonderful run through the countryside - the old DEMU just chugged along, warm air wafting through the window - a trip I'll never forget. Well sometimes things go a full circle, and in 2003 the Eastleigh - Romsey line was once more opened up to passenger traffic, and Chandler's Ford station reopened. On my last trip to the UK, I found that a service operated from Totton via Redbridge, then Southampton and Eastleigh to Romsey so I was able to retrace the previous journey almost exactly. The unit was a modern DMU, and the picture above shows it at Romsey, waiting to make the return trip to Totton.
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