23rd October 1999

Pathfinder Tours
The Sand Stormer

Route :
1Z55 : Waterloo to Weymouth
1Z95 : Weymouth to Waterloo

Sources : Nigel Rollings & Howard Parker (both on the train throughout)

Tour Review
(by Ralph Barrett)

Pathfinders Tours had advertised The Sand Stormer railtour, as attempting to beat the speed record from Waterloo to Weymouth, set by 442401/2 on April 14th 1988. Record time was 1 hour 59 minutes and 24 seconds. Booked motive power for the Sand Stormer was Deltic D9000.

In the event, the timings that arrived with my ticket showed that Railtrack had given the Pathfinder tour a 2 hour 22 minute schedule. Whilst this timing was still *much* quicker than the booked service train timings, it was nowhere near the record timing set in 1988 :-(

Living in Leicester, I decided to get down to Waterloo using Midland Mainline's special 'London Day Out' ticket, pretty good value at 30 quid. Good value, because this is first class, and also includes the full English breakfast. Indeed MML are now the only TOC still providing any sort of restaurant car provision at the weekends, as far as I can determine.

Booked departure time for the Sand Stormer was a very civilised 11:00 am from Waterloo. I arrived at Waterloo in good time, shortly after 10 am. Nice to see that the 11:00 special to Weymouth was already showing on the the departure board at Waterloo. Not so nice, was to see the departure time change on the solari board as I was watching it, from 11:00 to 12:00 ! Apparently two of the three locomotives bringing the ECS from Norwich had expired, probably both Duffs I reckon ;-) So this railtour was switching to 'Railtour Standard Time' even before it had started !

Rather than waste an hour of my life standing around at Waterloo, I decided to go and have a coffee in the Royal Festival Hall not far away over by the river. Also had a chance to admire the rather incronguous 'London Eye' wheel that British Airways have erected for the millennium celebrations. Strange indeed in such a setting.

Back to Waterloo at 11:45 to see...the coaching stock finally arriving behind 'shed' 66102. I was as surprised as anyone to see a rake of Anglia Mk2 stock arrive ! But not as surprised as some, who'd booked sets of four seats in standard class, only to find that most seats in 'Angular' MkIIs are now airline:-( I suspect that this is the first time that Pathfinder had hired in stock from Anglia, hence the misunderstanding with the 'airline' seating. I was quite glad that I'd booked first class on this tour, especially as I was in coach 'K' which would be next to the Deltic on the (rather longer) return from Weymouth to London.

The reason that the tour had been moved exactly an hour forward from 11:00 to 12:00, was probably because the L&SW lines operate an almost clock face timetable on Saturdays, so our booked path would still be more or less intact. Only fly in the ointment would be other TOC's trains, such as the Virgin Cross county workings and Wales and West's sparodic trains.

We had an Eastleigh crew for the record breaking attempt. Driver was Dave Darcy, who I'm pretty sure, was also driving the 33s at the last East Lancs diesel-fest. Guard was Rob Davies, and he was treating this record breaking attempt very seriously indeed. Indeed Rob came through the train explaining verbally to all the passengers that the record breaking attempt was 'on', and thanking everyone for their support etc. Our guard informed us that Railtrack had agreed to try and let the train run non-stop, and would *try* and keep its path clear. As the tour progressed, Rob gave us regular updates on the public address, and I'm afraid to say he started sounding more and more depressed as we got further and further away from that record breaking time:-(

Unfortunately, we were booked out of Waterloo at 12:00, exactly the same time as the timetabled fast train to Wareham. In order to get to Poole by 14:22, we would have to overtake this Wareham train somewhere en-route. At 12:00 on the dot, the Wareham train departed from the adjacent platform, and er.. nothing happened to the Sand Stormer. We eventually started at 12:03:40 and took a staggering 10 minutes to pass Clapham Junction. On the record breaking run in 1988, the 442s passed Clapham Junction in 5 minutes 16 seconds, so even by then, I was able to tell other passengers that there was little chance of our beating the speed record to Weymouth:-(

I was logging the train in detail, primarily using my GPS to log the speed of the train. Once under way, it became quite obvious to me that either the driver was driving with extreme caution (unlikely), or that the speedometer in D9000's cab appeared to be reading 2-3% too high. This meant that in the 90mph sections, the driver would ease off power *before* we'd even reached the 90mph mark. Even less chance of beating the record. Acceleration of D9000 is not helped by her field diverts not operating at their correct speeds either. With both power units on full power, field diverts on a Deltic *should* operate around 50mph for the first field divert, and 70mph for the second divert. On D9000 they actually operate at around 55mph and 84mph, and they're slowly getting higher. So the acceleration from 70mph to 84mph is 'painfully' slow. However, once the second divert kicks in around 84mph, D9000 starts to fly !

During the run, I did not have the L&SW line's speed profile in front of me, although I had believed that the maximum speed was 100mph in places before Southampton. Perhaps this is 100 'MU', as our driver never seriously exceeded 90mph, and we never got close to the magic 'ton'. I see from The Railway Magazine July 1988 that during the special run, the 442s were specially authorized to reach 110mph in places !

Railtrack actually 'did good', and I suspect that the progress of the Sand Stormer was being closely monitored by the controllers. Although we were several minutes behind the down fast Wareham 442, they seemed to have still switched this train onto the slow lines at Basingstoke for its booked stop. Railtrack signallers then sent it out on the slow line, and we passed it just before the slow lines end at Worting Junction.

Next problem was a late running Virgin Cross Country Manchester to Poole working, which we caught up at Winchester, and D9000 was severely checked. This screwed up any attempt of high speed running on this fast racing stretch. Railtrack eventually looped the errant Duff at St. Deny's near Southampton, and we were then given a clear road through Southampton Central station.

Final major potential problems were the single line section between Moreton and Dorchester South, and also a booked W&W sprinter in front from Dorchester West. We were checked at Moreton, as the up Waterloo 442 came off the single line section, although full marks to the crew as they avoided a stop. Luckily the W&W 150 was a few minutes late, so we got in front of it at Dorchester.

Sand Stormer arrived at Weymouth at 14:23:36, in 2 hours 19 minutes and 56 seconds from Waterloo. To beat the record would have entailed reducing this time by 20 minutes, which would have been almost impossible in my view, given all the other traffic around on the day. So D9000 has the now holds the non stop Waterloo to Weymouth record for a non-electric train. Incidentally the headboard was quite artistic, and shewed some sort of demonic creature causing a sand storm !

D9000 on arrival into Weymouth (photo: Howard Parker)

Weymouth was warm and sunny. I went for a walk on the beach, and spent quite a while walking around the old harbour, and looking at the quay-side tramway. Although this tramway looks long disused, I believe that Pathfinder ran a railtour to Weymouth Quay earlier this year !

Return from Weymouth was via ex GW metals via Yeovil, Castle Cary and Westbury. We had a 'storming' run up the 1-in-50 bank from Weymouth, speed dropping from 46 mph at MP1.8 to 37.6 mph at MP3.6 (tunnel mouth). The ex-GW single track line through Maiden Newton was virgin Deltic territory.

We then ran via the Berks and Hants all the way to Reading, although for some reason we did not exceed 90mph on this stretch. Indeed around Lavington D9000 dropped onto one power unit, and speed fell to around 70mph. As it was dark, I think that few others noticed that we ran around 20 miles on one engine. Unfortunately, this meant that we lost time, and then got stuck behind an all stations Thames Turbo stopper from Newbury, all the way to Reading, arriving there 20 minutes late on our 'new' schedule. I suspect that the problem with causing the power unit to revert to idling on D9000 was overheating again. D9000 Locos Ltd. really do need to get those radiators professionally reconditioned, as I suspect that the internal cores are partially blocked with 'crud'.

We ran 'Main' line from Reading to Acton, and we just managed to reach the 'ton' before we were checked by signals at Slough, presumably by a preceding train.

Originally the tour had been planned to terminate at Paddington. After Ladbroke Grove, the destination was switched to Waterloo. In the event the EWS driver only knew the road to Victoria, so we crawled around the usual Acton curves, round Battersea reversible and then stopped outside Victoria for ages, eventually arriving at 20:08. Quite a few passengers were trying to get the last ECML departure at 20:30. I doubt most made it :-(

In the event a good tour, and I was particularly pleased to see Railtrack entering into the spirit of the occasion. However, given the load of 9 Mk2s and 1 Mk3 catering vehicle, I believe that the record was probably never going to be broken. Especially so as D9000 appears to need her No. 2 speedo recalibrated, and those field diverts sorting out IMHO. However, with say 6 or 7 vehicles, the ETH turned off, a clear road, and a specially prepared Deltic, we might have stood a chance.

Timings (Booked & Actual)
(from Nigel Rollings)

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