Mastodawn

Two storied locomotives with a very special train.
This is Balfour Beatty's drain train, which cleans areas of the tracks where drainage isn't great.
But arguably, the more interesting part is the locomotives, 20901 and 20905.
These are old Class 20 locomotives built in November 1959 and January 1968 respectively, to a design that has it's roots in even older designs, dating back to the LMS (pre British Rail, which was formed in 1948).

Out of these two locomotives, 20901 (the last two photos) is the most legendary - having been one of the main sources of motive power on the Kosovo Train for Life, which travelled on rails to Kosovo after the 1999 Kosovo War. This means that it ran through UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and of course, Kosovo. Meaning that it's one of the furthest running British locomotive ever (possibly beaten by 92015 that transported containers that had originated in china, through the Channel Tunnel and into the UK). It faced difficulty in North Macedonia when it was held for a ransom of $8000.

I got really lucky with these photos, since a Balfour Beatty employee noticed me whilst waiting for the train to arrive, who then invited me to go trackside since, I quote, "there's no-one around, it's fine". From there I got these stunning shots of the locomotives.

#trainphotography #trains #britishrail

Christopher Phin Feb 27

Found an old Ladybird Book of British Railway Locomotives in a charity shop and nabbed it for a friend’s kid. Scanned in the illustration on the cover so I could also add it to the mailing label, so here, internet, have a pretty thing – as the original scan and a quickly cleaned-up 1-bit version.

#railways #trains #locomotives #BritishRail