A Stock withdrawals - Discussion

Thank you very much again for the information undergrounddriver.

I haven't seen 5080+5092 today but 5134+5161 were still formed up this evening. I guess it's likely that 5080+5161 will be formed up either tonight or during the midday off-peak tomorrow. Hopefully, they will get a last run out at some stage tomorrow on the assumption that they will be stripped Friday as is normal for a Monday scrap run.

Probably my last ride on 5160 this evening, havn't seen 5080 though

Should be 2 runs every week now except for 4th June.

Just thought you'd be interested to know that they seem to swap the trailers that these are on, on the A41 just before Hemel Hempstead, every Thursday afternoon, sometime between 2.30pm and 5pm.

They use both the northbound and southbound lay-bys for this, and they start to block them off with the waiting truck and trailer from about 1pm onwards.

Here's a photo of one set up waiting in the southbound, and another one in the northbound waiting for other cars/trucks to clear the lay-by so it can get setup. The slope on each of these lay-bys is quite steep which could explain why they use them to help with shifting each unit from one trailer to another...

thinkingfox.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/photo-2-e1336139185688.jpg

thinkingfox.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/photo-1-e1336139148246.jpg

I haven't yet managed to stop in time and get a photo of them actually transferring one :-(

I've no idea why they do it, both sets of the trucks and trailers seem to be from the same transport firm.

Different trailers required for Eastleigh and Rotherham. The Eastleigh ones are drawbar trailers with bogies at each end and are necessary to get over the bridge to the Works. The ones in the pictures are for Rotherham

I am interested to know what power this company has to block off lay by's just so they can swop their trailers round. Unless they have applied to the council for special measures this is a very poor practice indeed and should be stopped! I would not be happy if I needed to stop (or a lorry driver approaching the end of his/her driving hours) needed to stop and could not due to these people blocking a layby entrance!

Veritas has answered the question, but my point was based on the assumption that maybe they had only a limited number of tractor units which were LEZ compliant. As a result swapping the tractor units outside London with non LEZ units (which would then carry the trailers & carriages to Rotherham etc) would enable the compliant units to return back to London. That was my thinking!
The same discussion came up a while back with a Amersham - Northwood rail replacement job. All bar that short stretch of road, the rest is outside of the LEZ. One operator asked if they could use non compliant vehicles, but were told most certainly not!

South Mimms is not that far from Hemel Hempstead – I could save them the bother of the journey to Rotherham!

Just got off 5161!

5161 is at Rickmansworth, so what else is going on Monday with 5080?

So 5160 lives abit longer?!

N 5093+5080 S arrived Northwood Engineers' Siding at 1335 today.

Morning all!

Is T717 running tomorrow (16/05/12) please? and if so, which units are involved?

Presumably 5160-5161's stay of execution will be over and perhaps 5016-5017 might be the other unlucky unit. It's been reported on another thread that 5202-5203 is now paired up with 5114-5115, so 5016-5017 is therefore a potential candidate.

Many thanks for any info.

Best wishes

Green Lion.