Good Evening Folks, 

Sorry for the lateness of this blog post, been busy what with work and other commitments etc. My first railway-based trip out in quite a while took place on Thursday 10th October, with my good friend Steve and his Dad - whom I hadn't seen in a number of years so it was nice to have a catch up.

First port of call was Branston near Burton On Trent in Staffordshire, for 60062 working 6M57 Lindsey - Kingsbury loaded bogie tanks. We had originally planned to go to the foot crossing that WAS at the bottom of Warren Lane, but as we soon found out the foot crossing is no more (I was later advised it had been removed in August 2012!), thankfully, a lot of scrub clearance had took place during the removal process and as such - with the help of "an object" - I was able to get some height over the palisade fencing and thus get my shot.

Afterwards, move was made to Barrow Upon Trent, I've been there a number of times but this was Steve's first visit, we was hoping to get the 6E54 Kingsbury - Humber tanks here but as it later materialised they were 94 minutes late departing Kingsbury for reasons unknown, we headed back to Stenson/North Staffs Junction for the aforementioned working and also we were made aware of another Class 60 that was due, 60065 Spirit of Jaguar dragging 2 Class 66's (66198 and 66177) on the 6D44 Bescot - Toton departmental. This was more or less to time by time it reached us at North Staffs Junction footbridge although the Class 60 looked in a real state and could do with a lick of paint or something to smarten it up, I'm not sure if this loco could be a future example for overhaul as currently there are only 2 more in the WNWX pool and that is 60044 and 60066, although things could change from the new tax year in 2014.

Our ultimate aim was to shoot the Sinfin - Grangemouth tanks which are now operated by Colas Rail (and have been for quite a while) which had recently refurbished 56113 working them, I already have photo's of 56113 within this site in EWS livery and latterly Fertis livery when it was used in Europe for a couple of years before being expatriated back to the UK. Unfortunately getting this working didn't materialise and as such due to continuing abysmal weather conditions (plus we were cold and hungry) we called it a day, but never mind as we will no doubt get them another day :).   

Images can be found here: http://jamespower.zenfolio.com/p777316531 and are the 6 most recent images in the gallery.

Cheers for now.

James