When I was a kid, standing at New Street I only had a little brownie camera that took 110 film (remember that?) and couldn’t really take a decent picture of anything, not that I could afford film anyway so while I was there at the location and period I am modelling I never took any pictures of my own.  It’s somewhat taken for granted these days that we can just have access to images of whatever we want due to the internet and sites like Flickr but unless people were there at the time to take the images and today give up their time to upload them for no reward we would really struggle to get even basic info on our chosen subjects.  It is these unsung contributors that play a vital role in our hobby and its worth now and then taking a moment to stop and appreciate the efforts they go to.

Recently I found a video I hadn’t seen before that featured New Street, just a few months after the period I intend to model from Brian Hancock. His Youtube channel is well worth checking out and with his kind permission I can share with you his video.

This look back at the past is a prediction of my future. It is scenes like these that I am ultimately trying to recreate.

Theres a bit of Marston Green before and Reading after but these are still well worth watching, so if you have a spare 25 minutes – make your self comfortable and enjoy.

Some thoughts on the video

The first thing that stands out (because it’s the first train) is how un-colourful freightliner trains were in the 80’s with mostly white, blue and red boxes. The class 31 apparently rescuing a failed 47 (2.46) seems to be putting in a good performance.

The New Street stuff starts at 3mins 33 seconds and its interesting to note the lack of uniform rakes of coaches, there’s a set of nearly all Mk1s in blue and grey at 7min 50 though. Also worth noting is that none of this set is running on B1 bogies.  In fact there’s an awful lot of Mk1s throughout the film.

The Class 158 test bed, class 154 puts in an appearance just before 12 minutes as does the yellow 312, albeit in the background.  Is also worth noting the high number of light engine moves the highlight of which is a lash up of a class 56 and 2 class 58s in the 14th minute. I have no idea what the markings on the side of the DMU seen at 14.40 are but its worth noting that these 4 car 115/116 hybrids were common place at the time.

Theres an awful lot of platform enders throughout the film and this reaches a peak in the 15th minute as a class 45 generates much interest – I must remember to add the various bags they seem to leave lying arround to the model!  At 18 minutes there’s one of the Express Parcels liveried 128 DPU’s which is causing much frustration on one of the Model Railway forums at the moment due to the new model apparently being in the wrong colour. The last train seen at New Street is a bit of an oddity with a class 31 hauling a rake of what seems to be mostly first class air cons. Perhaps an excuse to use up some of those cheap Airfix Mk2 FO’s that we all seem to pick up as the years go by. It would certainly give the exhibition critics something to get excited about.

Theres a few highlights in the Reading bit too with 50027 (Lion) making a nice getaway, a class 56 storming through the station and one of the class 210 DEMUs.

Thanks to Brian for uploading it but as mentioned before thanks to anyone who uploads videos and pictures, the hobby would be all the worse without your efforts.