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Over the past two
years I have travelled the Crewe-Holyhead route several times,
been on the Irish Mancunian in both direction, been on both Farewell
Specials but I have never travelled to Birmingham behind one
of the 37/4 locomotives. The Grand Tour (Crewe-Holyhead-Manchester-Llandudno-Crewe)
is not possible any more and with only 10 days to go it was time
to rectify matters. So, on Wednesday 20th December 2000, I joined
1G96, the 8.47 from Holyhead, and set forth into the West Midlands,
an intriguing journey in that the train enters Birmingham New
Street from one end to travel out the other - no running round
to do. This of course is why, as Charlie Hulme explained to me,
that 37425 used to appear with "Concrete Bob" and "Sir
Robert McAlpine" facing alternate ways in rapid sequence.
Similarly now with 37429 and its part red nameplate and blue
nameplate. Apart from the incident at Crewe involving windscreen
wipers the journey was uneventful but interesting with lots of
growls en route.
The stock comprised 5331,
35513, 4876 and 5278, the latter having an annoying wheel flat.
Because my mind works that way I calculated that each time a
coach with a wheel flat went from Crewe to Holyhead and back
it would hammer the rail over 500,000 times and wondered what
that would do to the vehicle. Similarly I noticed that passing
class 175's appeared to be a maroon/plum colour instead of the
predominantly blue one sees at the platform edge. Consultation
with the internet revealed that this is probably due to the speed
at which these superwonderful machines travel and their subsequent
closing speed with the 37 - it is a phenomenon known as the red
shift - something that Patrick Moore has explained several times
on his programme the Sky at Night. It results from different
colours of light travelling at different speeds. Consequently,
if two superwonderful class 175's pass each other, such is their
resultant closing speed that each will appear white when viewed
from the other. Finally, should two superwonderful 175's pass
in a tunnel, where air pressures are rapidly increased and decreased,
they will prevent light from emerging and therefore will not
be seen at all. This confirms the widely held belief that railway
tunnels generally appear as black holes. QED |
