Thursday 30th March 2006 ~ A year (and a bit) of ONE

Peter Gifford ~ summarised by Chris Hurricks

Appeared in Journal 496

Once again we were pleased to welcome Peter Gifford from One's Crown Point depot to entertain us, on this occasion supported by his wife. This took the form of the showing of part of a video which Peter had compiled which consisted of TV news reports on rail topics and his own filming of various cab rides on East Anglian routes. Also included was the B1's departure from Crown Point on 6th.May 2004 after its buffer knocking incident at Norwich. ONE (alias National Express) has been operating passenger train services in East Anglia since 1st. April 2004 and it was revealing to see the many changes which have occurred in that short period and to see mention of well reported problems which have arisen.

First there was a review of Anglia's operations prior to the takover, including the award of Operator of the Year. Interesting were the interviews with passengers about the handover to ONE, including one with our own Darren Jennings. The big job of 2004 was the Ipswich Tunnel closure and major relaying to Manningtree which was well covered ; this was planned by First's train planning staff in London before the takover and was a huge success, even admitted by some hard bitten commuters. In this connection we were treated to a cab ride in a DBSO from Liverpool Street to Cambridge on one of the replacement services to Norwich. Other cab rides were from Ipswich to Norwich (viewed from the rear cab of an 86) and a very late in the day trip on Christmas Eve 2004 with 86235 from Norwich to Ipswich with driver Bob Bray, well illustrating the seemingly old style controls of these locos.

Major events since takover were brought home - the demise of the 86's, the return of the 156's in place of the unloved 150's and the gradual arrival of Mark 3 stock with the space age DVT's. The contrast between the latter and the DBSO's is very marked. After a few false starts the new ONE livery is being applied to everything including the staff ! To my eye this is a very attractive colour scheme seemimg to look good on all types of rolling stock. Afterwards there were a few questions inevitably mentioning Tim Clarke's departure, ably commented on by Peter before Steve Worsley's vote of thanks. This was a thought provoking show about local rail operations for which we thank Peter very much. The video's full length is 3 hours and he has very kindly donated a copy to the Society, also two 'scrapbooks'. Please see the Chairman's note for details of these and how they may be viewed.

Front Cover. 66718 at Felixstowe South Terminal on 4E33 Felixstowe South to Doncaster GBRF on Tuesday 18th April 2006. The first working of this locomotive since arriving fron Canada as part of an order of 5 for the GBRF-METRONET contract. Photo by Juan Hewnose

Rear Cover Top. Recently acquired tri-axle Olympian 30099 (K483 EUX) waiting outside Caister Road depot, Great Yarmouth on 26th April 2006. Photo by Graham Bessey.

Rear Cover Bottom. 46081 (K281 XUB) on service 9 at Castle Meadow in Norwich on 5th April. Photo by Fred Ward.