Managed to get last thursday off, and spent a while wondering what to do. Eventually I decided to go and phot the Freightliner cement, which runs down to Moorswater every tuesday and thursday. This weeks train was mega long, as the Tuesday trip was caped - more wagons.
66553 passes a very overgrown Coombe station on the Looe line, heading for Moorswater. The loco performs a shunt just after the station in a run around loop
running into the loop just after Coombe
You've probably all seen the Looe branch on msts - the Padd - Penzance route. It runs from Liskeard, under the mainline twice, and down to Looe.
66553 stands below the impressive mainline viaduct. I stopped underneath this whilst travelling over from Coombe - It is one of the rare viaducts that stands beside the pillars of Brunels original structure which was demolised to make way for the current, modern, bridge
Moorswater is an old ECC clay dry which Blue Circle cement purchased - back in the early 90s you used to see class 37s down there on clay trains, and it's quite eerie to see the clay still ground into the dirt.
The loco stands amidst some grass which really needs trimming
The place is a dump, basically, a very pretty dump (lots of trees and greenery), but it's on the outskirts of a quiet industrial estate, so there's a lot of scrap metal around, that sort of thing.
In the yard
An authorised walk down to see the loco whilst it was stationary - it's left on this section of line for a while. Note how overgrown the trees are
Another close-up
I had a few hours to kill, so went and had some lunch and contemplated moves for the afternoon. I filled up with petrol and bit my lip as I realised that the day was going to take me in a 100 mile trip, but what the heck - it's sunny, I've got an open visor, and there's trains to phot!
I eventually ended up at Restormel, which is just outside Bodmin Parkway. I discovered that my brake-pads were down to bare metal, which was... worrying, but none the less, I carried on.
In the "phot anything" mode, I took a few pictures of normal trains, such as this FGW HST
Strange liveried class 158 heads away from the camera
A class 153 happily bounces through the countryside - quality trains
After a few hours of sitting in the sun, a 66 horn was heard tooting through Bodmin Parkway. I ran to the position, and bagged this shot of 553, one of my favorite pics so far this year!
66553 passes Respryn at 17:08 - bang on time
Back on the failing bike and a rapid run down to Par was in order, behind the holiday traffic, to get these shots of the loco during the run around -
Waiting for a class 150 to pass to complete the run around
The class 150 meant that the train would be at least another 15 minutes before it left Par, so I had just enough time to shoot over to the famous location of Restormel, just outside Lostwithiel. After parking and running about half a mile in the sweltering heat, I was dissapointed to see that clouds had started to gather around the sun. Very fortunatley they broke literally just as the train arrived, shadow just behind me, but a spotlight of sun on the train;
Horrible shrubs get in the way of this shot, a tripod through the fence may be required in the future to get rid of the overgrowth before the shot is ruined totally
An unspoilt shot of the train, concluding the day
And that was that. Many thanks to the friendly crew, they're a real credit to their company. I managed to miss 6m72, the Irvine china clay working, it ran through restormel as I walked back to the bike, camera in hand. Ah well.
This is a regular working, so if you're ever in the area I suggest you try to see it - it's very surreal seeing a Cement train travelling down a tiny rural branch line!
Thanks for reading and viewing,
Jon
