As has become traditional this years Class 56 hauled Christmas railtour takes place on the above date.
The C56G are expected to have a small sales presence on the train- usually in the buffet car. We also hope to hold the usual C56G Raffle which always proves to be very popular.
Details on the Pathfinder website at the link below.
https://www.pathfindertours.co.uk/events/the-grotto-grid/
Photo (Courtesy John Powell /C56G collection) shows 56118 ,56121 and 56105 at Tinsley on 19th October 1986 . 56105 was only 4 years old when the pictre was taken. The other two 56s were 3 years old! 56105 is still in service with Colas almost 33 years later.
56098 has just propelled a rake back into the sidings while 56081 sits on the sand road ready for action.
Photo by C56G Chairman , and left uncropped to demonstrate view possible from the adjacent public roads.
Frther to recent posts details on the trains operated by 56006 can be found on the following link.
http://www.elrdiesel.info/locomotive-roster.php
The Blue timetable is in operation and 56006 is booked to operate the diesel turn commencing with the 09:15 Bury- Heywood (all services headed D are booked for 56006 )
Please spport the group and the railway if you can. If you do travel please come and say hello to one of several C56G committee members who will either be on the train, loco, platform or buffet!
After all the hard work to get the loco fully operational this running day represents the third of three days the loco needed to work to assure the railway we’ve got it reliable.
Keith
Sunday 8/9/19
By way of update , and demonstrating the truth of our post of almost a year ago, 56128 now resides at Longport and although initilally lined up as a standby in case any of the other 56’s dropped out of the program, it is understood the loco could now form part of the project .
Similar things happened with the class 57/0 project when a locomotive was found to have been suffering from a collision many years previously. The damage rled the loco out of becoming a 57/0 and anothe rclass 47 took its place.
If 56128 were to become a class 69 it would be one of a handful of surviving Crewe built locos. Crewe BREL built 56116-56135 to allow Doncaster to switch over to class 58 production . The srvivors being:-
56117- Floyd- Hngary – stored as source of spares.
56124- as 56302 – in service with Colas
56125 – as 56303 – collision damaged at Wembley.
56128- Longport- standby for Class 69 repower project.
By way of comparisson the ‘ poor quality’ Romanian batch seem to have faired slightly better in terms of number of locos surviving:-
56003-running as 56312- operational
56006- preserved-operational
56007- part of Class 69 repower project
56009- as 56007
56018 as 56007
Monday 10/09/18.
Further to the recent reports on the road movement of 56128, we received the above image from Phillip Betesta.
There was a time when any photograph of a loco heading to a scrapyard could be confidently captioned with the phrase ‘final journey’. However, recent times seem to have proved this to be incorrect, as several locos have reappeared again. Let’s hope the future is brighter for 56128 this time around?
Interestingly, the loco carries round OLEO buffers at both ends. As a Crewe built loco, 56128 would have had oval buffers fitted throughout its working life. The only known exception being 56125 which carried a set of round OLEOs at one end only for a period.
56006 is booked to operate three round trips on the above date.
The locomotive will operate the booked diesel turn starting with the 09:15 departure to Heywood.
In addition the locomotive is booked to operate driver experience trips on the following dates
19th September (56 to operate in the afternoon only – depending on demand)
11th October ( replacing booked loco 40145)
56301 is awaiting replacement wheelsets at Leicester.
The C56G hope to be in a position to make an annoncement soon on the plans for our mainline registered locomotive.
18/8/19
56006 sucessfully completed a test run last friday (9/8/19) and completed a running day yesterday(17/8/19).
56006 worked the 1145 Bury Heywood , with the rostered loco – 37109 inside for insurance , ran round at Heywood and then worked the 1215 and 1515 Heywood – Rawtenstall trips. If the loco had shown any problems 56006 would have worked more of the turn single handed. As the loco performed well the top and tail mode was used to reduce shunting at either end of the line.
29/6/19
56006 has undergone a lot or work recently to overcome the problems associated with the damp conditions over the winter when the locomotive does not operate.
This has included many hours of work and testing and the use of a small fan heater to drive the moisture out from the sensetive electrical equipment in the control cubicle.
The locomotive went on a test run last night running upto Heywood with 45108, 37109 and 33109 as ballast.
Unfortunately the locomotive is suffering a fault meaning the locomotives protective circuits trip out at very low amps. The loco made the trip , but the fault means the loco is unable to attain even moderate speed before tripping out. We took 25 minutes to do the run which normally takes about 12 minutes.
The loco has therefore been withdrawn from the line up and the Gala days when our small technical team , who would be attending anyway, will try and investigate the fault. The test run did prove that the fault is unlikely to be on any of the motors, as we switched out each pair in turn and the fault still persisted.
We are disapointed to have to make this decision but our team have been working hard to get the loco ready and we were confident the moisture related problems had been overcome.
56006 is booked to work 3 round trips working the diesel turn on the Blue timetable. First train is 09:15 to Heywood and then 3 round trips between Heywood – Bury- Rawtenstal.
56006 has been declared fit this morning after some dedicated efforts by our technical team following the failure of the locomotive prior to last weekend booked test run. Given the locomotive hasn’t had a test run , class 37 locomotive 37109 will go along as insurance .
Preparations are underway for the arrival of a 20′ container.
The location has been identified and we need to add more ballast to the right hand edge of the current ballast shoulder and then site upturned concrete sleepers .
The ELR guys will use their telelifter to do the heavy lifting but we’ll need a team of volunteers to level the area and the sleepers so the container sits level.
The container will be used to store parts, tools and manuals we need when we work on 56006. Currently these are stored in volunteers homes and brought to site each time we go. Obviously having all the gear already there will make things a lot easier.
Of course without volunteers to use the tools it not going to be much use . If anyone wants to get in touch please use the e.mail addresses in the contact section of the website.
Freshly repainted into DCR livery ,the recently returned to traffic 56091 has been announced as a visitor to the ELR Diesel Gala in July.
Details on other visiting locos are available on the ELR website.