Now down in Cornwall
and the West Country, things quickly settled down into a pretty regular
pattern. This was to be the first of many West of England railrovers that
myself and various mates would do, and the gaps in our knowledge of traction
habits, diagrams, workings and timetables were
soon filled
by careful observations during the first few days of our debut visit.
We planned to
doss on trains for four nights and stay in youth hostels for three. These
were located at Penzance, Bideford (near Barnstaple) and Bath, giving a
pretty broad spread over the confines of the rover area. Things never go
according to plan, though, and even less so when you're a
bunch of spotty
fourteen year olds who, to be honest, had the common sense and maturity
of an adolescent Frank Spencer. We soon realised that the 'youth hostel'
option was faulty on two counts: 1) You were missing out on a ridiculous
amount of hoover mileage, and 2) They were oppressive places, to say the
least. Amongst being bothered by a group of screaming pre-pubescent
boy scouts (and having to share a dorm with these insects) and Pete getting
thrown out for eating his Weatabix on the stairs, we decided never to go
back to the wretched places on the count that a
beautiful early
generation Mk 1 compartment with unscrewable light bulbs was a far comfier
option. As Pete would say of youth hostels, 'a complete waste of bashing
time and money!' To be honest, I couldn't agree more.
Never again did we plan on staying in youth hostels, just seven solid overnights from now on, which was to bring a whole new set of problems, the least of which were terrible bouts of acne peppered with hints of malnurishment and the odd embarrassing rash!
The idea of getting
hoover mileage whilst sleeping proved to be too good a proposition to turn
away, thus my long and mostly enjoyable association with the 1B02 and 1A07
began in earnest. These were the night Paddington-Penzance and return sleepers,
which also carried a respectable amount of
compartment
seating accommodation. Our routine would generally involve arriving
at Penzance in the early evening on one of several hoover-hauled services,
going to the pub for a few pints, getting some fish and chips and boarding
the 1A07 early so you were guaranteed a comp all to yourselves.
I don't know
what has happened to all the passengers since then, but in 1982 these trains
were packed virtually every night and loaded up to fourteen vehicles. That's
a lot of people, a far cry from today's 'Riviera' with only a couple of
air-cons for seating (and mostly empty!). We'd set our
alarms for 02.20
and wake up just in time for the Taunton stop, our hoover collections at
least 162.25 miles better off. I say 'at least' because on most nights
you were guaranteed a dose of multiple working which in practice
could be from
and to any of the following places: Penzance-Plymouth, Plymouth-Exeter,
Penzance-Exeter, Plymouth-Newton Abbot, Penzance-Newton Abbot, or even
Penzance or Plymouth-Paddington. This was a throw back to the days
when hydraulics worked these services. And the
assisting locomotives
were a free-for-all as well. Looking through my old notes, we had 33's
piloting (Plymouth-Exeter section only), many nb 31's, 47's (nb and eh),
50's, and even the odd peak.
On reaching Taunton
at about 02.35 we'd scuttle off out of the station and into the dark night
to find the alley way situated by the old British Rail Staff Association
buildings. Here I'd bring out our secret weapon. The one item that enabled
us to mileage hoovers overnight repeatedly with no need for stress - the
army stove! There was only one food...... beans. As Pete used
to say, 'a pure bashers diet!' This was something that I'd borrowed
from my
step father
who was in the cadet force - two billy cans and a compact stove, which
when you opened it up contained several blocks of solid fuel, enough to
last a whole week of overnights!
It was then back
to the station for the 03.10 departure west - the 1B02 to Penzance. Copping
a comp was a trifle more difficult here as the train tended to be well
loaded from London and Bristol and I can recall one occasion when no seating
was available, let alone a compartment. I ended
up dossing down
in the corridor, only to be awoken at Truro by someone accompanied by a
rather large suitcase, desperately trying to step over my head. On another
occasion we had the experience of dossing in the brake van which on this
night happened to be conveying a coffin! Imagine our
discomfort at
trying to get some shut eye with that next to you. Just as we were nodding
off, Pete whispered to me, 'It was obviously his last wish', referring
to the double-headed hoover haulage we were getting (50031 + 50017). 'Shut
up and go to sleep' was my terse reply, although I couldn't help
giggling at
his pathetic sense of humour.
On arrival at
Penzance we would always fail to wake up. It was left to a poor cleaner
or guard to prod us (and even to this day whenever Pete comes to stay,
I always like to wind him up by waking him up in the mornings and shouting
'Pete! Pete! Wake up! We're at Penzance!'). We would then stumble
down the platform,
desperately trying to wake up and,without speaking to one another for a
good half an hour, reassemble on the sea wall to have some Weatabix. This,
once you'd woken up and were less grumpy, was a great experience. I remember
those mornings fondly: the sun rising high in
the deep blue
sky and reflecting off the sea along St. Michael's Bay, and on the other
side of you stood a gleaming Class 50, ticking over after hauling the overnight
Pad-Penzance mails and TPO . We knew this, as often it would precede the
1B02 into Taunton earlier that morning.
From earlier experience, we learnt to leave a good hour before going for another train toward Plymouth. You really did need this time to recuperate after such a long overnight. The 09.05 Penzance-Manchester relief as mentioned in the previous article became a good train to leap on. Pure Mk 1's (of course) and virtually empty to Plymouth, it provided more much needed doss time to catch up on previous nights' sleep (or lack of it). The only bad thing was, being a relief, it wasn't actually booked for anything, and would often churn out a 45 or even one of the dwindling 46's. It seems odd in these days of fibre glass trains more akin to buses that there was a day when a 46 hauling a rake of Mk 1 compartments was frowned upon by us!
This routine
became the booked move for us fairly solidly, until we came unstuck one
night after a particularly heavy night of boozing in Plymouth. The idea
was to pick up the 1A07 at Plymouth at 00.30 and continue doing the normal
move until we would be deposited at Penzance that morning.
This however,
was not to be......
We arrived at
North Road station with a couple of minutes to spare, roaring drunk, and
feeling rather the worse for wear. I thought I was delirious, however,
when I saw 33004 back on to the train engine - 47455. At least we
were going to score some decent haulage off the crompton, more than can
be said about
the duff. All I can remember of this hazy night is that it was very
stormy, and as we traversed the banks of South Devon, I remember opening
the window of our comp and throwing up all down the side of the train.
With the rain beating against my face it soothed my sore head and made
me feel a little better. This gives you some indication of the state we
were in and I'm sure you'll not be too surprised to hear that my next memory
is of awakening to look out of the window, seeing the puke stained glass
and realizing to my horror that it was light outside. We were experiencing
what is commonly known in the bashing world as 'overdossing'.
Twenty minutes
later we pulled into Reading station hideously n.v. (non valid, i.e. way
off limits with a West of England railrover) and feeling like a sledgehammer
had been taken to our skulls. What a total nightmare! As if
that weren't
enough, we then had to suffer the indignity and humiliation of having to
take a 125 all the way to Liskeard, just to get back to some decent traction.
This was done, but not before heaving up again in the gents at Reading
and then having to fork out fifteen quid on a ticket to get back to
railrover land.
Add to this the fact that some bashers were on the hoover pulling into
Liskeard; you can imagine their total amusement as they heard of
our ordeal and wasted hoover mileage. Well that really was the brown
icing on the
proverbial dung cake.
'Progress' however,
was just around the corner, and our beloved night trains ('milk trains'
as they were known traditionally in the West Country, although milk urns
had long since disappeared from the service) were about to
undergo a hideous
transformation which in one foul swoop would virtually end the appeal of
overnight bashing in the West of England. Yes, I'm talking 'air cons'.
In July 1983 the service was relaunched with much showbizz pizzazz on the
concourse of Paddington station and renamed 'The Night Riviera', a name
which the train still carries today. Now, coincidentally Pete's mum
happened to be gettingthe inaugural train on her way to a holiday in the
Isles of Scilly and, since we were down in St. Ives on a part-bashing,
part-drinking holiday, well, we just had to view 'our' train and go and
wave Pete's mum off on her holidays.
We got the first
unit out of St Ives and congregated on the platform at St Erth in eager
anticipation. We knew from all the bumph that BR had put out that this
was a bit of a media event, so time-keeping was of paramount importance,
and they would obviously try turning out something a bit special to haul
the train. Imagine our total disgust when, running exactly to time,
a horrendous 47500 'Great Western' came round the corner with all the poncy
touches including an immaculate paint job, white wheels, silver buffers
- in fact, the
full works. We thought they could at least have turned out something decent
like 'Ark Royal' (Pete's beast) or 'Hood' in similar treatment but oh no,
not today. We had to vent our disgust by a bit of appropriate
bellowing.
As soon as the train started off for the final few miles into Penzance,
we opened the windows and started making big winding motions with our outstretched
arms as if winding a huge clockwork key and signifying to those 'in the
know' that we thought the loco up front was rancid and worthy only of a
clockwork motor. This was quite a sight, as Pete is blessed with
absurdly long arms! Obviously at 7.15 a.m. on a weekday morning nearing
the tip of Cornwall there weren't going to be many people 'in the know'
to see us doing this ridiculous action, but it amused our simple
minds nonetheless.
Suddenly the train's air brakes were rammed on in full force, grinding
the service to a halt. We had stopped only fifty feet further down the
line, and on leaning further out of the window we were shocked to
see an angry
guard signalling for us to get our heads and bodies inside the train. The
driver, observing long arms flailing from the back of the train, must have
thought that it was the guard signalling for the train to stop!
When the train
finally arrived at Penzance, it was ten minutes late. As sod's law
would have it, we met up with Pete's mum just as the guard came down to
give us a right good rollicking. Apparently he'd been issued special
instructions
that time-keeping was essential due to the heavy media coverage the train
would be receiving at Penzance. It was at this point that we turned
around to notice the barrage of reporters and photographers at
the end of the
platform. As part of the train's PR, fashion models had travelled down
from London, and the photographers were snapping away, trying to get shots
of the girls posed next to the train headboard. The headlines
from the local papers and rail magazines tended to dwell (a little
too much perhaps)
on the fact that the train arrived ten minutes late. After reading this,
many people will now attribute the blame to a few fanatic hoover bashers,
but in my mind I will forever put it down to the fact that the
train was 47
hauled!
My final fling
with the West of England night trains was as late as 1989, on what I believe
to be the last ever hoover-hauled overnights on these services
(unless someone
out there knows better?). By this time I was working at the Red Star
parcels office in Paddington and the place was full of bashers. As
you can imagine, gen was very forthcoming, especially with the TOPS office
a short walk
away. By 1989 the overnights were solid 47's and air-cons, although
one stray Mk 1 stood in for a Mk 2 for a few weeks in that year, albeit
an open and not a comp. On Friday the 4th of March some gen came
through that 50037 was allocated to the 23.55 Paddington-Penzance,
somewhat confusing
since I already knew 50037 was at Laira. Anyway, always up for a gamble,
I filled in my priv. pass and hopped on. The rather bland 47 608 departed
and off I went to sleep, not really believing that 'Rusty Lusty' was going
to produce. Imagine my joy then, when the duff was
duly removed
at Plymouth and out of the darkness appeared the tatty early Network South
East liveried 50037!! What a total result! This I had all the
way to Penzance.
Having a bit
of cash spare at the time I decided to make a weekend of it down in Cornwall.
I didn't want to travel back to London on anything that wasn't loco-hauled,
so I figured I'd wait for the Sunday nights up 'Riviera' and bide my time
until then. Looking around, I thought how much had
changed since
I frequented the Duchy's railways a few years previous: I now deemed
myself 'lucky' to score a 47/4 on a sprinter substitute. Everything seemed
so shut down and quiet since I was last there (God knows what it must be
like now). I made my way back to Penzance for the Sunday night totally
unaware of what was in store. I assumed that 50037
would return
to London by way of a parcels train, so imagine my utter jubilation when
I discovered that in fact she had been provided for our journey back to
Pad!!! I cracked open a bottle of hastily purchased champagne in celebration,
booked myself a sleeping compartment (essential, as these were placed next
to the loco) and armed with the
knowledge that
this was almost certainly the last time I would ever have a hoover on the
overnight, spent most of the night 'out of the window'. What a party.
Unbelievably, there were a few other main fifty men on board, although
only one had the sense to fork out for a sleeping berth like me.
An air of depression came over me upon arriving at Pad. I thought of all those pictures I'd seen of grown men crying at Kings Cross on the last day of the Deltics and here at Pad on the last day of the Westerns. This was my own very personal good-bye. Sure I would have hoovers out of Pad again, but never again on 'my' train. That morning I not only said good-bye to 'Illustrious' and hoovers on the overnights, I said good-bye to my childhood. Something that I loved so much as a child was no more.
Since 1989 even
more has changed. With the opening of the Channel Tunnel the 'Night
Riviera', for the first time in its history, has been scheduled to arrive
and depart from London Waterloo in order to connect with services to and
from Europe. These days, if you go to Waterloo at about eleven thirty
on a weekday night you can see what's left of this once important train.
A shadow of its former self, a lone survivor in a world of sprinters, 125's
and
bustitution.
A glimmer of hope remains, though, with the chance of 37/6's on the European
'Night Star' services from Plymouth to Paris and Brussels. Will this mean
a renaissance in night travel (and bashing) in the West Country?
Only time will
tell. Let's hope that a service that has lasted now for almost a century,
will continue, although possibly in a different guise, for another
hundred years.
CAPTAIN GREY.
'If it's grey
take it all the way!'