1001 goes to the West Somerset Railway - 'West Somerset Limited' Railtour Part 1 - 19/06/10

On Saturday 19th June 2010, class 201 'Hastings' DEMU No. 1001 worked Hastings Diesels Limited's third tour of the year, the 'West Somerset Limited', which took the 'Thumper' from Hastings to Minehead on the West Somerset Railway, the longest preserved railway in the UK.

The tour started at Hastings and travelled via Battle, Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge and Guildford to get to Reading. From here, the 'Thumper' took the 'Berks & Hants' line down to Newbury and Westbury. After Westbury, the tour was supposed to run via the Frome avoiding line, however, due to early running and presumably no available path, the train took the Frome station line to get out of the way of FGW HSTs. The route was then to Taunton and on to the West Somerset Railway.

The return from Minehead saw the 'Hastings' unit retrace its steps along the West Somerset Railway and on to Fairwood Junction where the tour took the Westbury avoiding line instead of the Westbury station line as per the outward route. From Heywood Road Junction, the 6-car DEMU was back on the outward route, running via Reading, Guildford, Redhill, Tonbridge and down to Hastings.

This is part 1, showing the tour on the outward route from Hastings as far as Bishops Lydeard on the WSR.

Some photos @ http://craigrailpics.fotopic.net/c1862793.html
.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• HDL
• 1001
• DEMU
• Thumper
• yt:crop=16:9

[HSTChris]

Excellent footage dude, I saw this at Warrior Square :D

[21C123]

Cheers Chris! Shall have to check out your videos in due course ;-)

[HSTChris]

@21C123 I am working on uploading them at the moment, they'll be here soon :)

[21C123]

@HSTChris Cool, will have to stop by your channel later tonight or tomorrow then. I'm working on part 2 of this now and there's still a part 3 to do.

[Isochest]

At 5:06 was this Cogload Junction? Looks like a Bloody Good day out to me:-))))

[crazymanlargemarge]

@21C123: oh ok! the scenery looks good aswell :P i might have to visit there sometime! :)

[21C123]

@crazymanlargemarge The return from Minehead to Bishops Lydeard on paper was meant to take 57 minutes, but I don't think that happened as we had a slightly longer than expected stop at Blue Anchor due to a couple of tour participants missing the tour at Minehead! And in the end they boarded at Williton IIRC, which was an unscheduled stop. It's possible though, but only just.

[robmasterman]

Superb as always Craig, excellent camera work, and a joy to take the trip with you. Whilst I'm not a SR fan as such I do like this unit and it's wonderful quirkiness...Roll on parts two and three...Bob

[crazymanlargemarge]

@21C123: oh ok, i knew they couldnt do it in under an hour :L

[21C123]

Does a bit. Looking through the WSR's timetable, their trains take roughly around 1 hour and 15 minutes to get from Bishops Lydeard to Minehead. However, their trains stop at most/all stations which doesn't help (they have 10 stations). Looking at our times for yesterday, we were supposed to do the WSR in an hour. There's some cracking scenery so the long journey time isn't at all that bad.