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Basford Hall, Crewe - 13th December 2008

Class 87s waiting to be moved to Bulgaria
Class 87s waiting to be moved to Bulgaria. G Morris

  
66501
  66501. D Rapson
On Saturday December 13th, 12 members braved very wet weather to visit Freightliner’s locomotive facilities and yards at Basford Hall, Crewe. The visit was arranged courtesy of Jez Fordham of Freightliner Intermodal. These visits take place in Jez’s spare time in return for a donation to a charity of his choice and in 2008 he has raised over £1100. We were delighted to add to this total and all of us were grateful to him for allowing the visit, especially since he had been on duty since 04:00 in the morning and had already driven trains to & from Ditton ! We would also like to thank him for his patience in allowing us safe access to virtually everything in the yard during some particularly foul weather.
  
66574
  66574. J Cowlishaw
However we got off relatively lightly - back at Crewe station, passengers to Euston were being advised not to travel due to severe flooding in the West Midlands.

Undoubtedly the main focus of our attention were 3 of the class 87s that are destined for export to Bulgaria. 87003 & 87034 were in Bulgarian Railway’s green & yellow livery but 87006 was in its final GBRF livery (blue with orange cab window surrounds).

87034
87034. D Rapson
87006
87006. D Rapson

As with the other former GBRF Class 87s, the paintwork on 87006 was regarded as good enough to be retained, with Bulgarian Railways insignia added; the other 2 locos were ex-Virgin examples and their livery had faded so much that painting in full Bulgarian livery was essential, The 3 locos had been tripped from Long Marston to Crewe earlier in the week and would soon be loaded on to lorries for transhipment to Bulgaria via the ferry at Hull.

  
47830 and 66551
  47830 and 66551. G Morris
Two class 47/8s in dark green livery were present. 47816, as a result of a “side-swipe”, had been shunted into the compound alongside the road entrance where 47150, in Freightliner’s green livery, is also kept. However 47830 was stabled near the fuelling point and is occasionally used for shunting in the yard, when it is restricted to a top speed of 15mph. (Picture 045 near here) It cannot operate under its own power on the main line as it is not equipped with OTMR. 47289, in Freightliner’s grey livery, was also dumped in the middle of the sidings along with 86635.

Another interesting loco present was the unique 86501. This had been out of traffic for some months following fire damage but it has recently been repaired - Jez was able to confirm this as he had shunted it off an overnight arrival earlier in the morning. In contrast to our visit in 2007, there were relatively few class 86/6s present. Among the class 66s were Freightliner’s first, 66501, and most recent, 66957, examples. 66503 & 66589 were parked adjacent to one another allowing us to note the the differences between the cab ends of the earlier & later batches. (Picture 004 near here) A number of named examples were present, the most noteworthy being 66526 (Driver Steve Dunn, “George”) which was named in tribute to the Freightliner driver who was killed in the Heck disaster that resulted in the scrapping of 66521.

86501
86501. D Rapson
66503 and 66589
66503 and 66589. G Morris

Locos noted in and around the yard were:

47150 47289 47816 47830
66501 66503 66509 66514 66517 66519 66523 66526 66550 66551 66554 66560 66565 66574 66588 66589 66591
66608 66609 66619 66621
66957
86501 86604 86614 86635
87003 87006 87034
90042 90046 90049

DRS’s 66423 & 66428 were noted in the adjacent sidings of Crewe South yard in top and tail mode on RHTT wagons. This formation had been based at Reading and were obviously en route back to Carlisle following the ending of the season’s activities.

While walking around the yard some WCML traffic was observed. In particular a pair of Virgin Thunderbirds (57304 & 57306) passed light engine from Oxley to take up dragging duties from Crewe later that morning and they were soon followed by 66411 “Eddie the Engine” on the “Tesco Express“ (4S43 Daventry - Grangemouth). 92039 was noted on an up intermodal (4Z33 Trafford Park - Wembley)

This report is provided in good faith from personal observations on the day and from additional information supplied by Bob Casselden & David Rapson. I am also grateful to Dave Douglas for the loco list and to David Rapson & John Cowlishaw for risking their cameras in some particularly poor weather to provide some of the photos that accompany this report.

Geoff Morris

90042 at Basford Hall
90042 at Basford Hall. D Rapson

20/12/08