| 92028 failed whilst working
the 1S26 Euston to Glasgow service on the night of the
22nd/23rd and had to be rescued by 66610. Below is an
account of proceedings from Mr Bevan, a passenger on 1S26...
"92028 which failed last Wednesday morning at Northampton
on 1M11, it was repaired over the last week and after
working a test run on 21st April, it was then allocated to
work 1S26 on the evening of 22nd April 2015. I admit, I had
a fairly uneasy feeling when I saw 92028 on the stops but, I
ignored all the warnings and took my seat upon 1S26 to
Edinburgh Waverley.
At 2352, we duly departed Euston and took a fairly normal
run to Watford and then onto the Trent via Northampton. We
crawled through Nuneaton and for some reason, travelled
bang-road on the up main as far as Amington Junction. This
is the last thing I actually remember about the journey
behind the Dyson before I woke up at 0115 to find the train
at a stand and a distinct lack of ETS. The lack of heat made
it immediately obvious that something was wrong, so, I went
to investigate. I found a customer host and was informed
that the engine was encountering issues with its
computer and was being rebooted. Fast forward an hour and a
similar conversation ended with 'its a total failure and
we're being rescued shortly'.
I'm not sure how the rescue loco came to be a
Freightliner loco but 1Z99 was soon 'in' and departed Crewe
Basford Hall at 0405, almost 3 hours
after the 92 had failed... At 0504, 66610 (nice) passed the
train and dropped onto the top of the knackered 92 and went
through the necessary
prep to get the train underway. At this point- I was told
that the 66 would drag the train to Crewe where another
locomotive (probably 90037) would take over. However,
another problem then arose. The parking brake on 92028
refused to release and, we continued to sit blocking the
down-main at Colwich junction.
Virgin pendolinos and voyagers were now in evidence
and were passing by the train on the slow lines (both up and
down), at 0632- 87002 powered past with 1M16 (running 20
late).
At around 0745, news began to trickle through that a
new rescue locomotive was en-route (presumably 90037) and
would get the train shifted by 0900. So, we sat and waited,
and waited, and waited. Then, at 0830 the brakes burst into
life and staff began running up and down the stricken train.
At 0844, the signal went off and 66610 began to move the
train forwards, at a fair old rate of acceleration. At 0903,
we approached Stafford, running a mere 399 minutes late.
Here, a special stop had been arranged but I opted to stay
on until Crewe. No sooner had we left Stafford were we
braking again and shortly, we were sitting on the slow line
at Norton Bridge waiting for some plastic to pass.
Once we got underway again, it was a stagger to Crewe.
By now, it was blindingly obvious that the train was about
to be pinned and staff had
begun turfing people out of their berths. At 0940 we passed
Basford Hall Junction and began to cross over the ladder
into platform 12, we finally
came to a stand in Crewe station at 0946, 485 minutes late.
People poured onto the platform and VT staff as well as CS
staff were extremely good at providing information for
connections with other services. The stock went ECS to
Polmadie as 5S26." |
