I moved away from London 10 years before this was filmed. My prime spotting time was from late 1972 to 1975. Paddington was very different then. Mostly diesel hydraulics. Western, Warship and Hymek. Always the first stop on a trip around London.
Love the videos. The brings back memories of taking the tube to Paddington from Dagenham in 1989 and 1990 for trips to Cardiff, Swansea and Ireland via Fishguard. Cheers Sol. Back in Canada now but I actually miss British trains.
Good memories Paddington without wires. Loco hauled trains. I too remember the Westerns Warships and Hymeks. Paddington has its own atmosphere. Thank you. Howard
The Paddington,I used to know.now gone forever.thanks for posting,this excellent 80's footage.Many happy memories,and not so happy memories,of my B.R service days,with the classes 47 & 50.please post more,O.O.C would be nice.Jim.former driver.W.R
Thanks. Yes, i do have more including some shots in OC. were you an ex OC man? If so i've worked with several of your ex colleagues! I'll sort out some OC shots for a future upload.
I have great memories of Paddington as a child from travelling to the West Country by steam and by the 'Westerns', is it just me or did everything seem so much better in the eighties, wish I could relive those days, makes me sad when I see videos like these. Sorry I never got to record anything now. Great work.
Thank you for having the foresight to record these wonderful scenes for future generations to be jealous at ! Paddington was probably one of the best London termini for loco hauled action. Waterloo was good too. But sadly Liverpool Street with its 47s, St Pancras with its 45s and Kings Cross with its 47s, 55s and even 40s were long gone even around the mid/late 1980s. 1988 when the 45s went, was probably the end for me.
I'm pleased you enjoyed it. I took these videos for my own pleasure, never dreaming that one day it would be possible for them to be seen worldwide!.....I do have more from this era including the class 210 DMU working off Padd!
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus I think I rode in both 210 001 and 210 002, but regrettably I never recorded unit numbers back then. Instead I concentrated on the locos.
A reminder of all the loco release and coupling moves that had to be done before MUs took over passenger work (exc the Pz sleeper.) and postal/news/parcels traffic died off.
1985. A year still remembered with mixed emotions on the Western. I was 14 and I was a regular at Reading as this was the nearest we could get to wall-to-wall diesel action, being from third rail Southern territory. Excellent.
Wow! Talk about a trip down memory lane! I lived just outside Reading when you filmed this so I was on Paddington station a fair bit during the ealry to late 80's. I was also 19 in 1985 but I took all this for granted and thought it would last forever. All very bland now ofcourse- you can actually stand on Paddington station now and not see one diesel powered train!! Some would argue ofcourse that should have been the case years ago! A great video anyway!!!!
made me cry, loved it loved it loved it. how boring has paddington become, over head wires, quiter trains, less pollution. use to love the smell of diesel at padd, and them start ups i have seen at the barrier end of pad when the engine has been shut down. all sadly gone now, and they call that progress, well done for vid bud, i have liked shared and subbed.
I aim to please! This was just everyday railway life back then. I was 19 and had just got the big video camera that took E180 VHS tapes and went out to film all i could. Padd was always good, plenty of diesel action wheter main line or just locals, smokey 117s chugging off to Reading and perhaps beyond. All gone now! look out for one of tomorrows uploads, the follow on from here when i went to St Pancras for the evening peak (in more ways than one!). It will probably be the evening upload, i have a bus one going up in the morning. I'm banging a few up quick 'cos i'm away for a couple of weeks.
i have to admit, i ran away from bristol to london back in 1989, thought streets were paved with gold like. lol. anyway, i use to hang around the big stations at night, and now i am 43, i so wish i had a camara to capture all the scenes i saw, from travling post office to newspaper trains out of waterloo, even class 91's with a class 43 dvt on end, the end of the peaks out of st pancras, and five car dmu's with no gangway running out of marylebone. but when ur young, you just dont think about it. i am sorted now by the way. but still got my mems. feel free to look at my channel bud, i have some intresting stuff on the if you like steam or even busses, mostly modern trains tho.
Hi Robin, i'm pleased you like the vid. There is another one i'm uploading right now showing a few Peaks & other stuff at St Pancras in 1985. I will check out your channel, i like all transport-buses, trains, tubes and planes!
Far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere. - This used to be written on a wall near Paddington in big white capital letters and it's stuck with me ever since.
Well the place has certainly changed that's for sure! The last HST's are due to run on 18 may this year and i hope to be there. I remember riding on them in October 1976 with a BR special promotion fare to Bristol, my Dad & I went to see the Clifton Suspension Bridge & the SS Great Briton. Seems crazy that the same trains running then are still just about with us 43 yaers later-quality built stock!
@@HFStuart True, i've not been on one yet but have high expectations of some thrash! (well, not real Valanta thrash unlike my first ride on one in October 1976-hellfire!!!)
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Soi Buakhao Hi Soi ----- Have you opened a new channel or rebranded???? All your videos are now appearing on the Trains, Trains, Trains youtube channel with zero reference to you and giving the impression that it is 'their' work. If it's not you perhaps you'd like to take it up with youtube. th-cam.com/video/lRMwVz-hBZc/w-d-xo.html
Soi Buakhao Yes, This is a super deal. Always look forward to any great eastern stuff. Did you catch the 306 emu's before they vanished? ( Rail blue ).
Sadly no, i didn't get a video camera until August 1985 and the 306s went 1981/82 time. I did ride on the farewell railtour they ran and unit 017 survived as Iford Depot's pet. It did get out from time to time on odd running days and i hauled it (with 37 023) from Acton to Rickmansworth for an LUL open day in about 1995 time. Fred Ivy was out videoing it i seem to recall so it may be uploaded to TH-cam?
Another great video, really enjoyed it. Look forward to watching your videos as you up l I ad them. I assumed a 50 would have taken the 13 coach ECS the 31 brought in, but no a 47 did the honours.
Happy memories of my train spotting years! When we still had what looked like a National railway network, still with many loco hauled trains; also look how Weed Free the track work was, properly maintained, unlike the weed choked mess it looks today!
Very interesting video to watch. The first time I ever travelled from Paddington was in 1964 on the 'Torbay Express' on a family holiday to Torquay. It was still steam hauled in these days. The train on the return journey was diesel hauled, much to the annoyance of my Grandmother who seemed to think that a diesel hauled train was somehow inferior and she was being denied a ride on a proper train! I guess the loco hauled Mark I rakes are operating Oxford line services. I quite liked the Mark I coaches; they may have lacked air conditioning but the seats were certainly more comfortable than the seats on modern trains today and these trains certainly offered a lot of capacity on this route. The train departing at 12.27 which appears to be composed of Mark III, II and I coaches with only one 1st class coach situated at the wrong end of the train for a London service and a Mark I buffet car is interesting. I wonder where it is going ... could it be operating to Birmingham and perhaps beyond to Manchester or Liverpool on the cross-country route? Being much more familiar with the ECML HST's of the period, I found the 7 X 2 configuration interesting. I notice that on the 1st HST pictured at 2.45 there is standard class seating between the kitchen/buffet and the 1st class seating, which must have been difficult if restaurant car service was provided on this train, unless standard class seating was used for the restaurant car. The other HST's pictured have the restaurant/buffet reversed from what I am used to so I assume that the restaurant car service was offered in the 2nd 1st class coach.
Yes, the MkI's were on Oxford & Newbury trains. And it's quite likely the mixed rake was a cross country working, they had some very unusual mixed rakes at this time. Plenty of variety at Padd in those days......
@@AndreiTupolev Quite likely, yes. In some circles they were called jumbo trains. HSTs had become too popular, and BRWR had to pinch some sets from south west diagrams and replan them on other journeys to meet excess demand. Apart from buffet and brake coaches, I only recall Mk2 aircons on those jumbos, i.e. passengers wouldn't find them too much of a downer compared to the Mk3 taken away from them.
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Noooo I've never been on a HST as I live in Liverpool and I was only born in the 2000s era so dammit. Will the Network rail one be withdrawn as well or not
@@harrystrains3227 I imagine the yellow NR one will keep going, it is full of specialist equipment and will run for years to come. There will be ex LNER ones running on the Midland until the end of the year and of course Scotland and the West Country have some short sets running for the foreseable future. Plus of course you have class 68s running from Liverpool LS, they thrash well. See my vid of them here th-cam.com/video/wMmGFQfPDNA/w-d-xo.html
Bloody marvellous memories flooding back as I watch this. Around this time my late Uncle Emrys ran The Border Hotel round the corner from London Paddington at Norfolk Square and so he and I were always at Paddington especially in the Pre-NSE days. NSE arrived in August 1986 and I remember seeing my first NSE liveried train on Wharncliffe Viaduct in late 1986. Other good memories of December 1986 and April 1987 when another of my late uncles (Uncle Les) went into Ealing General Hospital twice and with an excellent view of Wharncliffe Viaduct from his hospital ward. Emrys and I visited him frequently: Can anybody guess why maybe LOL :o)
I'm pleased you like it. I worked on the WR in the 1990s, it had already changed by then, now it's unrecognisable! I know Wharncliff Viaduct quite well, spent time sitting on ballast trains on it over the years + putting up the juice wires for the Heathrow Express which is all that used them then.
My goodness who was your boss? I knew Owen Gibbs / Les Moyle and Heinz Winters from Slough IECC (nee Slough Panel) through the Area Signalling Projects Office at Macmillan House. Also knew Steve Kelly and Gary Smithson from recruitment and training when I joined the RTS in 1991. From 1993 to 1995 Gary Osborne was my boss as I was positioned at Banbury. That so called rebuild at London Paddington (1992) did result in some minor changes but nothing like the extent to which it was originally intended to - Crossrail stuff at Royal Oak never done for starters where there was a workshop and the ASPO sub-office & Gerald from the HSE based as well as a great vantage point for watching trains pass by. BTW Do you remember that bloody great rake of Mk2D aircon carriages Network SouthEast picked up from Intercity Cross Country one of which (13575) was repainted into NSE colours? Talking about it the other day to someone who remembers it as well. I'm sure this was used from early 1993 until the Turbos arrived at the tail end of that year.
I was a driver with Trainload Freight at Acton, Tony Sugden was out boss. We used 09s on the Spie trains to put the wires up for the Heathrow Express, bloody cold in winter, made a class 37 seem warm! And quite a trundle back to Southall from Padd even with an 09 at 27mph! The coach you refer to i seem to recall on the West of Englands. I did rather a lot of filming over there until the loco hauled's finished and i have an NSE air con on some of the trains. I just have a lot of film to go through, i had about 55 3 hour VHS tapes of just BR filming without the buses and Underground!
Either they ran light from Old Oak Common depot (maybe after hauling a set of emties to depot) or on a holding line near the old Ranliegh Bridge servicing point.
I wonder where the 13 coach train was heading?? Summer special to Devon or Cornwall maybe? Interesting mix of coaches too. Most GWR loco hauled trains were load 8-10 during this period.
What is that on the left at about 8:30? Is that the parcels pick up and delivery spot? I presume that lovely old DMU at 11:15 would've been from Oxford or something? That old lettering on the far side saying Great Western Railway on a huge warehouse too. It was still a railway then. Looks like someone getting a wee cab ride 13:20!!! That wee treat of '38 stock in Red at the end too. What a wonderful video thanks!
At 8.30, that is the old parcels loading platform and wasn't for public use. The old GWR warehouse has no long gone as is most of everything you see running in this vid! The 38 stock at the end is at the end of most of my older vids in order to upload the end cards over rather than the video uploaded......
At the time,most of the DMU sets only ran as far as Reading. The Oxford services were merged into the Reading stoppers when the Turbos arrived in 1991/2. I grew up near God's Wonderful Railway in multiple locations at that end of the line......
Growing up on Reading station in the '70s and '80s this is all very familiar. I loved the HST's in their original colour scheme but you'd have to go a long way to beat a Class 50 in full flow in my book.
I have not yet had the 'pleasure' of one yet but i suppose i will at some point. I have been on the 700 & 717 Thameslink/Great Norther stock recently and they are just as bad for travelling on, the seats are very hard. Why not just go back to 19th centuary cattle trucks and have done with it!
I was there a few days ago! •The London Underground route uses S7 (might be S8) stock. •The Intercity 126s now have the MTU engines. •The routes further north now use class 800s. •GWR now operate (not BR Western Region). •The Heathrow connect and express now operate. •The Thames valley fleet uses class 387s (not FG DMUs). •It was 2018, not 1985.
at 13.11 the class 31 slows down to see the second man bail out for a paper lol, could have sworn that was me ?. Great days at OOC as a second man and driver , dunno what my lungs will be like in years to come after breathing in the diesel fumes 😥
I have video of it then as well but it had been working for Trainload Freight first and was in freight livery then. Happy days! I will try & get some vids up i took of loco hauled Oxford & Newburys, lots of old Speedlink freight locos working out their twilght years on NSE expresses.
Quite nostalgic! What was the camera system then? One of the early Sony Video 8 products? In those days the Western Region HSTs were 2+7, and it's worth noting how smoky the original Paxman engines were. It was common practice not to let them idle at the concourse end. At that time, they would almost all have been on either Bristol or Cardiff/Swansea services.
Hi John, the camera i used was a Panasonic M1 which took E180 VHS tapes. It was fairly large but rested quite nicely on my shoulder which kept it quite steady (this film was only the second time i used it) and of course what i filmed onto was the master tape, no copying was involved with the resultant loss of quality, so they kept their sharpe edge! It was transfered across to DVD in the early 2000s and now all is on MP4 so they should last forever! As to the HSTs, by 1985 all were built and the some of the last sets were on the West Country services by then but BR didn't build enough to cover all services so loco hauled sets remained. Some of the shots here show Inter-City services to both the West Country and probably Birmingham (& beyond) as well as Oxfords, Herefords ect
So it was an old analogue tape camera, in effect. One of the good features of it was that the audio and video tracks were recorded together. There are loads of old 8mm film recordings with either no audio, or attempts to dub audio recorded separately (as was always the case with film cameras), which have been converted and published online, as well as being sold as DVD archives (I bought quite a few of those in recent years). I didn't start using a portable movie camera until mini DV became available. It was a Panasonic DS1. Did the same as yourself transferring old VHS tape content onto DVD, and indeed BD - you can 'squeeze' a lot of tape onto 25 GB Blu Ray!
I had seen old cine film of a friends buses & trains from the 1960s and that set me off at 17 on cine film. But it was very fiddly, joining it together, no sound, a ball ache to watch and VERY expensive for a 5 min silent film. In 1985 i went onto night work and my pay went up £30.00 a week (a fair bit then and only 18 myself) so i invested in the latest video camera at Dixons (remember them?). I knew i need something that went straight to an E180 in order not to loose quality and the M1 was one of the first out, and panasonic were a good make. I think the results have stood the test of time, they seem to be very popular here on TH-cam!
James, them were the days! Proper locos on proper trains. Wish I had a time machine to go back with a digital camera and record it all properly not just saving expensive film for the locos
Was the signal at the end of Platform 1 numbered OO7? Please say it was so. "Great Western Railway Goods Station" ghost lettering surviving in the background too.
Old Oak Common Signal Box used to control Paddington and the box code was indeed OO, so alll signal plates were prefixed with OO. So there would have been signals from OO1 upwards......
How times change, workmen standing just a few feet away from an on coming inter city 😮 & the bloke hanging out of the window of one of the carriages, you'd never see that now.....
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Huh??... Why not the way to keep on together, running on time with it. Pretty poor jobs one freight train service create this train isn't.... Should place freight train stays on together and keep the train moving. Because is being delayed or operating problem the time is running late,.. It's such is poor service like this freight train run around to behind the carriage train line it is! 😓
To my of the bat knowledge the "Executive" Inter City livery go back as far as 1984 which later carried over into the Inter City Swallow livery in the late half of the 1980's NSE livery was introduced 1986. Carry on Soi, I love these video's from the last 10-15 years of British Rail before it all got privatised 😊
First thing I remember seeing was 87012 Cœur de lion in inter-city on the WCML, that was 1984...BR experimented with 87006 City of Glasgow in a railfreight grey at the same time. If I remember correctly the first 86 was 86242 James Kennedy GC.
I remember visiting London in the 1980s as a young child and most of it looked in a very bad state. When we got back to my home town in the Midlands it was like going forward about 30 years. The complete opposite of today. 1985 was actually the low point as far as the population of London is concerned. It dropped to about 6.5 million that year, having declined every year since 1939. In 1986 it finally started to rise again, which it's been doing every year since then.
Did they? Trains leaving Paddington had been idling for a while so on pull away they look smokey but that soon past once they were thrashed up after vleaving the station area.
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus wow, only 1, they drank diesel for fun but they were very productive. It'd be nice to see more 31 out on the rails, sad that so many were scrapped
I've travelled by train a good deal since the early 80s. I could never understand why, before the mid 90s, you had 8, 10, 12-coach trains with a baggage car or at least a compartment, and plenty of seats. Now the longest train I last ravelled on was two Voyagers coupled together, horribly overcrowded, luggage everywhere, miserable. Isn't there some modern equivalent of the rake of Mk 2s and a luggage van that could be invented, or are we to just put up with crowded, cramped modern traction?
Well Trans-Pennine Express are getting some Mk5's with a 68 loco one end and a DVT the other. That's some sort of improvement. I think the 68 thrash quite well for a modern loco.
I moved away from London 10 years before this was filmed. My prime spotting time was from late 1972 to 1975. Paddington was very different then. Mostly diesel hydraulics. Western, Warship and Hymek. Always the first stop on a trip around London.
Love the videos. The brings back memories of taking the tube to Paddington from Dagenham in 1989 and 1990 for trips to Cardiff, Swansea and Ireland via Fishguard. Cheers Sol. Back in Canada now but I actually miss British trains.
@7:38 jumped when the horn blew lol
Great filming, excellent. Thanks to people like you these once great scenes can be seen again. Well done
Thank you. Yes, that horn did catch me out a bit lol......
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus I got me too lol
Great video thanks
Good memories
Paddington without wires.
Loco hauled trains.
I too remember the Westerns Warships and Hymeks. Paddington has its own atmosphere.
Thank you.
Howard
The Paddington,I used to know.now gone forever.thanks for posting,this excellent 80's footage.Many happy memories,and not so happy memories,of my B.R service days,with the classes 47 & 50.please post more,O.O.C would be nice.Jim.former driver.W.R
Thanks. Yes, i do have more including some shots in OC. were you an ex OC man? If so i've worked with several of your ex colleagues! I'll sort out some OC shots for a future upload.
Brilliant shots, such good memories.
Thank you.....
Transported me right back there when I was 15. Great variety of haulage back then.
Nowadays the only locos I see are 66’s
Love these old videos. I was spotting around this time.
Still got more from around this time......keep viewing!
I have great memories of Paddington as a child from travelling to the West Country by steam and by the 'Westerns', is it just me or did everything seem so much better in the eighties, wish I could relive those days, makes me sad when I see videos like these. Sorry I never got to record anything now. Great work.
Thank you....still have more from this time....
Proper Old School Trains, Love the Sounds from BR on the Main line back then ❤️💝 Was between 11 and 12 back in 1985, Miss these days.
And HST's still in original livery......can't believe it is 35 years ago now......
Aye. Its a shame I never got to see any of them. I was born in 05, the dying days of the proper train
Memories. Thank you for making me feel 10 years of age again
Keep an eye out, i still have more from 1985 onwards and will upload over time.....
Absolute classic scenes. Love the sound of the 50’s! Thanks for sharing
You're welcome! I have more to come as well, keep an eye out.
Wow, takes me back to my sporting days in the mid eighties especially.
Quite an amazing variety of traction at Paddington in those days. I still have more from here & this era, keep watching.....
The Paddington I remember 50's 40's and 31's ... To bad you missed the Western's and Hymek's ... That was indeed a special time
I have seen hydraulics when spotting with my Dad in the 1970s and he did get pics of a least Westerns during that time.....
nice to hear a 125 screaming out of paddington,have not heard that sound in a long time😁
I used to call them the 'yellow beaks' 😂 loved them beats the Pendolino hands down
they were known as Flying Banana's back then.....
How much I hated the sound of those screaming Valentas back in the day. How I’d love to hear them now.
Yes, compared to the replacements they got (apart from the VP185s) they sounded great!
Those were the days, Soi. Thank you for that.
I love classic British, German and American Railways, they are so beautiful and attractive.
Thank you for having the foresight to record these wonderful scenes for future generations to be jealous at ! Paddington was probably one of the best London termini for loco hauled action. Waterloo was good too. But sadly Liverpool Street with its 47s, St Pancras with its 45s and Kings Cross with its 47s, 55s and even 40s were long gone even around the mid/late 1980s. 1988 when the 45s went, was probably the end for me.
I'm pleased you enjoyed it. I took these videos for my own pleasure, never dreaming that one day it would be possible for them to be seen worldwide!.....I do have more from this era including the class 210 DMU working off Padd!
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus I think I rode in both 210 001 and 210 002, but regrettably I never recorded unit numbers back then. Instead I concentrated on the locos.
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus I believe that I travelled on a 210 as a small child, not quite understanding what it was at the time.
A reminder of all the loco release and coupling moves that had to be done before MUs took over passenger work (exc the Pz sleeper.) and postal/news/parcels traffic died off.
Yes, Padd was really busy back then. I do have a vid with an 08 at work here and even one of the class 210 DEMU's!
1985. A year still remembered with mixed emotions on the Western. I was 14 and I was a regular at Reading as this was the nearest we could get to wall-to-wall diesel action, being from third rail Southern territory. Excellent.
Reading was always a good spot, it looks a little messy there now days.....
Excellent - thanks for posting. Great 50 footage.
Thank you, i have more great 50 shots, both WR & SR, keep an eye out!
Another great video, all history now.😢I also filmed here before popping along to Ealing Broadway, was another great location🤓
Yes, i've got a fair bit of vid along the line myself, future uploads!
Wow! Talk about a trip down memory lane!
I lived just outside Reading when you filmed this so I was on Paddington station a fair bit during the ealry to late 80's. I was also 19 in 1985 but I took all this for granted and thought it would last forever.
All very bland now ofcourse- you can actually stand on Paddington station now and not see one diesel powered train!! Some would argue ofcourse that should have been the case years ago!
A great video anyway!!!!
There will be more! Including Reading, and Oxford all around the same time. Happy days!
Gosh. I have vague memories of going to Paddington at around time time as a very small child.
Good times and memories of the 50's and 125's.
made me cry, loved it loved it loved it. how boring has paddington become, over head wires, quiter trains, less pollution. use to love the smell of diesel at padd, and them start ups i have seen at the barrier end of pad when the engine has been shut down. all sadly gone now, and they call that progress, well done for vid bud, i have liked shared and subbed.
I aim to please! This was just everyday railway life back then. I was 19 and had just got the big video camera that took E180 VHS tapes and went out to film all i could. Padd was always good, plenty of diesel action wheter main line or just locals, smokey 117s chugging off to Reading and perhaps beyond. All gone now! look out for one of tomorrows uploads, the follow on from here when i went to St Pancras for the evening peak (in more ways than one!). It will probably be the evening upload, i have a bus one going up in the morning. I'm banging a few up quick 'cos i'm away for a couple of weeks.
i have to admit, i ran away from bristol to london back in 1989, thought streets were paved with gold like. lol. anyway, i use to hang around the big stations at night, and now i am 43, i so wish i had a camara to capture all the scenes i saw, from travling post office to newspaper trains out of waterloo, even class 91's with a class 43 dvt on end, the end of the peaks out of st pancras, and five car dmu's with no gangway running out of marylebone. but when ur young, you just dont think about it. i am sorted now by the way. but still got my mems. feel free to look at my channel bud, i have some intresting stuff on the if you like steam or even busses, mostly modern trains tho.
Hi Robin, i'm pleased you like the vid. There is another one i'm uploading right now showing a few Peaks & other stuff at St Pancras in 1985. I will check out your channel, i like all transport-buses, trains, tubes and planes!
What do you think it must feel like for those of us who remember when Paddington was nothing but steam and the red 1938 stock on the Metropolitan?
Far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere. - This used to be written on a wall near Paddington in big white capital letters and it's stuck with me ever since.
Well the place has certainly changed that's for sure! The last HST's are due to run on 18 may this year and i hope to be there. I remember riding on them in October 1976 with a BR special promotion fare to Bristol, my Dad & I went to see the Clifton Suspension Bridge & the SS Great Briton. Seems crazy that the same trains running then are still just about with us 43 yaers later-quality built stock!
I was thinking 'what a knackered rake of Mk1s' then it occurred to me that they were newer when this video was made than most Mk3 coaches are today!
Frightening to think how far back i filmed this video! And in 3 weeks time the last booked HST works off Padd!
I'm not a big fan of the Hitachi's but on the plus side in means more HST GTis!
@@HFStuart True, i've not been on one yet but have high expectations of some thrash! (well, not real Valanta thrash unlike my first ride on one in October 1976-hellfire!!!)
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Soi Buakhao Hi Soi ----- Have you opened a new channel or rebranded???? All your videos are now appearing on the Trains, Trains, Trains youtube channel with zero reference to you and giving the impression that it is 'their' work. If it's not you perhaps you'd like to take it up with youtube. th-cam.com/video/lRMwVz-hBZc/w-d-xo.html
Wonderful video. Thank you. Happy days.
Quite a busy station with a nice variety of stock. I do have more to upload from here......
am loving this footage
A while agao now, i was 18 when i filmed this!
Thank you for another great video.
You keep watching and i'll keep 'em coming!
Soi Buakhao Yes, This is a super deal.
Always look forward to any great eastern stuff.
Did you catch the 306 emu's before they vanished? ( Rail blue ).
Sadly no, i didn't get a video camera until August 1985 and the 306s went 1981/82 time. I did ride on the farewell railtour they ran and unit 017 survived as Iford Depot's pet. It did get out from time to time on odd running days and i hauled it (with 37 023) from Acton to Rickmansworth for an LUL open day in about 1995 time. Fred Ivy was out videoing it i seem to recall so it may be uploaded to TH-cam?
Another great video, really enjoyed it. Look forward to watching your videos as you up l I ad them. I assumed a 50 would have taken the 13 coach ECS the 31 brought in, but no a 47 did the honours.
I'm back from hols and will see what i have handy to go up, maybe another Scotrail one??? !
Great video, really fascinating
It's amazing to see how it's all changed at Padd, not a wire in sight and HSTs with Valenta's and original livery!
I’m happy to be here and support this awesome channel
New subscriber💕
Thank you.....lots of vids already uploaded, with lots more to come!
Happy memories of my train spotting years! When we still had what looked like a National railway network, still with many loco hauled trains; also look how Weed Free the track work was, properly maintained, unlike the weed choked mess it looks today!
It was probably weed free then because of all of the oil that the trains dumped onto it.
Very interesting video to watch. The first time I ever travelled from Paddington was in 1964 on the 'Torbay Express' on a family holiday to Torquay. It was still steam hauled in these days. The train on the return journey was diesel hauled, much to the annoyance of my Grandmother who seemed to think that a diesel hauled train was somehow inferior and she was being denied a ride on a proper train!
I guess the loco hauled Mark I rakes are operating Oxford line services. I quite liked the Mark I coaches; they may have lacked air conditioning but the seats were certainly more comfortable than the seats on modern trains today and these trains certainly offered a lot of capacity on this route.
The train departing at 12.27 which appears to be composed of Mark III, II and I coaches with only one 1st class coach situated at the wrong end of the train for a London service and a Mark I buffet car is interesting. I wonder where it is going ... could it be operating to Birmingham and perhaps beyond to Manchester or Liverpool on the cross-country route?
Being much more familiar with the ECML HST's of the period, I found the 7 X 2 configuration interesting. I notice that on the 1st HST pictured at 2.45 there is standard class seating between the kitchen/buffet and the 1st class seating, which must have been difficult if restaurant car service was provided on this train, unless standard class seating was used for the restaurant car. The other HST's pictured have the restaurant/buffet reversed from what I am used to so I assume that the restaurant car service was offered in the 2nd 1st class coach.
Yes, the MkI's were on Oxford & Newbury trains. And it's quite likely the mixed rake was a cross country working, they had some very unusual mixed rakes at this time. Plenty of variety at Padd in those days......
That'd be a Penzance train at 12:27. There were a couple of daytime loco-hauled trains loading to 13 coaches at that time
Roses are red
My name is glen
Nobody read this story ben
@@AndreiTupolev
Quite likely, yes. In some circles they were called jumbo trains. HSTs had become too popular, and BRWR had to pinch some sets from south west diagrams and replan them on other journeys to meet excess demand. Apart from buffet and brake coaches, I only recall Mk2 aircons on those jumbos, i.e. passengers wouldn't find them too much of a downer compared to the Mk3 taken away from them.
Isn't that the platform at which 50041 decided to slide onto which you're standing on?
I love the HST with its old Valenta engine it sound beautiful
Yes, they really did thrash & scream well with a Valenta in them. The later replacements were somewhat quieter.....
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus really. That's weird. Oh well. Can't complain. There are still some with certain companies
@@harrystrains3227 No Valenta's at work. The Midland Main Line still has some with the VP185 but they are do for withdrawl shortly.
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Noooo
I've never been on a HST as I live in Liverpool and I was only born in the 2000s era so dammit. Will the Network rail one be withdrawn as well or not
@@harrystrains3227 I imagine the yellow NR one will keep going, it is full of specialist equipment and will run for years to come. There will be ex LNER ones running on the Midland until the end of the year and of course Scotland and the West Country have some short sets running for the foreseable future. Plus of course you have class 68s running from Liverpool LS, they thrash well. See my vid of them here th-cam.com/video/wMmGFQfPDNA/w-d-xo.html
Bloody marvellous memories flooding back as I watch this. Around this time my late Uncle Emrys ran The Border Hotel round the corner from London Paddington at Norfolk Square and so he and I were always at Paddington especially in the Pre-NSE days. NSE arrived in August 1986 and I remember seeing my first NSE liveried train on Wharncliffe Viaduct in late 1986. Other good memories of December 1986 and April 1987 when another of my late uncles (Uncle Les) went into Ealing General Hospital twice and with an excellent view of Wharncliffe Viaduct from his hospital ward. Emrys and I visited him frequently: Can anybody guess why maybe LOL :o)
I'm pleased you like it. I worked on the WR in the 1990s, it had already changed by then, now it's unrecognisable! I know Wharncliff Viaduct quite well, spent time sitting on ballast trains on it over the years + putting up the juice wires for the Heathrow Express which is all that used them then.
My goodness who was your boss? I knew Owen Gibbs / Les Moyle and Heinz Winters from Slough IECC (nee Slough Panel) through the Area Signalling Projects Office at Macmillan House. Also knew Steve Kelly and Gary Smithson from recruitment and training when I joined the RTS in 1991. From 1993 to 1995 Gary Osborne was my boss as I was positioned at Banbury. That so called rebuild at London Paddington (1992) did result in some minor changes but nothing like the extent to which it was originally intended to - Crossrail stuff at Royal Oak never done for starters where there was a workshop and the ASPO sub-office & Gerald from the HSE based as well as a great vantage point for watching trains pass by. BTW Do you remember that bloody great rake of Mk2D aircon carriages Network SouthEast picked up from Intercity Cross Country one of which (13575) was repainted into NSE colours? Talking about it the other day to someone who remembers it as well. I'm sure this was used from early 1993 until the Turbos arrived at the tail end of that year.
I was a driver with Trainload Freight at Acton, Tony Sugden was out boss. We used 09s on the Spie trains to put the wires up for the Heathrow Express, bloody cold in winter, made a class 37 seem warm! And quite a trundle back to Southall from Padd even with an 09 at 27mph! The coach you refer to i seem to recall on the West of Englands. I did rather a lot of filming over there until the loco hauled's finished and i have an NSE air con on some of the trains. I just have a lot of film to go through, i had about 55 3 hour VHS tapes of just BR filming without the buses and Underground!
Where did they hold all the 47s when they turned around for outward journeys ? great footage by the way best era of British rail diesel locomotives 👍👍
Either they ran light from Old Oak Common depot (maybe after hauling a set of emties to depot) or on a holding line near the old Ranliegh Bridge servicing point.
Good question, but they weren't far away?
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbusRanelagh Bridge loco Sidings became a car park.
I wonder where the 13 coach train was heading?? Summer special to Devon or Cornwall maybe? Interesting mix of coaches too. Most GWR loco hauled trains were load 8-10 during this period.
And to think we replaced some of those with a 3 car Turbo! (or sprinter if in other parts of the country)
that'd be to Penzance.
just like the old football special.we were herded in like cattle....happy memories though
Yes, i remember BR running special football trains with old/spare stock. Always had some good haulage with them.
Exactly around four months before I was born. The happier days.
I should have done more filming at this time but work got in the way! Still i can treasure what i have got.
Yes the good old days ,before anybody was to concerned about what came out of the exhaust pipe??
Fantastic!
Lovely and not a weed in site, oh happy days.
General Motors why are weeds not removed like that nowadays...?
What is that on the left at about 8:30? Is that the parcels pick up and delivery spot? I presume that lovely old DMU at 11:15 would've been from Oxford or something? That old lettering on the far side saying Great Western Railway on a huge warehouse too. It was still a railway then. Looks like someone getting a wee cab ride 13:20!!! That wee treat of '38 stock in Red at the end too. What a wonderful video thanks!
At 8.30, that is the old parcels loading platform and wasn't for public use. The old GWR warehouse has no long gone as is most of everything you see running in this vid! The 38 stock at the end is at the end of most of my older vids in order to upload the end cards over rather than the video uploaded......
At the time,most of the DMU sets only ran as far as Reading. The Oxford services were merged into the Reading stoppers when the Turbos arrived in 1991/2. I grew up near God's Wonderful Railway in multiple locations at that end of the line......
Growing up on Reading station in the '70s and '80s this is all very familiar. I loved the HST's in their original colour scheme but you'd have to go a long way to beat a Class 50 in full flow in my book.
The sights and sounds of a real railway. I would prefer to spend 5 hours in a Mk1 coach than 3 hours in the Hitachi junk that is now in use.
I have not yet had the 'pleasure' of one yet but i suppose i will at some point. I have been on the 700 & 717 Thameslink/Great Norther stock recently and they are just as bad for travelling on, the seats are very hard. Why not just go back to 19th centuary cattle trucks and have done with it!
The seats in first class on the new Hitachi are awful andno buffet cars on them either really have no idea why they stopped the buffet cars
Hst 125 have the same cc 72000 engines ?
I was there a few days ago!
•The London Underground route uses S7 (might be S8) stock.
•The Intercity 126s now have the MTU engines.
•The routes further north now use class 800s.
•GWR now operate (not BR Western Region).
•The Heathrow connect and express now operate.
•The Thames valley fleet uses class 387s (not FG DMUs).
•It was 2018, not 1985.
Dominic Dinosaur Train & Bus Productions InterCity 126s ey...? :-P
I'm quite interested in how the tracks look dirty it's like a sort of dark black colour which was only around in this era anyone know why?
Lots of diesel trains that dripped oil onto the track!
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus oh ok thanks
at 13.11 the class 31 slows down to see the second man bail out for a paper lol, could have sworn that was me ?. Great days at OOC as a second man and driver , dunno what my lungs will be like in years to come after breathing in the diesel fumes 😥
Yes, i did wonder if there was a young Paul Stewart or someone like yourself caught on film long before i knew them.
It's amusing seeing 47430 at 2:00... it finished its' days operating out of Paddington on NSE trains to Oxford/Banbury
I have video of it then as well but it had been working for Trainload Freight first and was in freight livery then. Happy days! I will try & get some vids up i took of loco hauled Oxford & Newburys, lots of old Speedlink freight locos working out their twilght years on NSE expresses.
Nice vigorous start by 50007. That Mk 1 rake looks a bit ratty though; some of the sweepings of Old Oak sidings there.
Happy days! 🙂
Love the hst screaming away
Yes, a Valanta on full power is great to listen to......
Who doesn't?
Better than SRT today.
Quite nostalgic! What was the camera system then? One of the early Sony Video 8 products? In those days the Western Region HSTs were 2+7, and it's worth noting how smoky the original Paxman engines were. It was common practice not to let them idle at the concourse end. At that time, they would almost all have been on either Bristol or Cardiff/Swansea services.
Hi John, the camera i used was a Panasonic M1 which took E180 VHS tapes. It was fairly large but rested quite nicely on my shoulder which kept it quite steady (this film was only the second time i used it) and of course what i filmed onto was the master tape, no copying was involved with the resultant loss of quality, so they kept their sharpe edge! It was transfered across to DVD in the early 2000s and now all is on MP4 so they should last forever! As to the HSTs, by 1985 all were built and the some of the last sets were on the West Country services by then but BR didn't build enough to cover all services so loco hauled sets remained. Some of the shots here show Inter-City services to both the West Country and probably Birmingham (& beyond) as well as Oxfords, Herefords ect
So it was an old analogue tape camera, in effect. One of the good features of it was that the audio and video tracks were recorded together. There are loads of old 8mm film recordings with either no audio, or attempts to dub audio recorded separately (as was always the case with film cameras), which have been converted and published online, as well as being sold as DVD archives (I bought quite a few of those in recent years). I didn't start using a portable movie camera until mini DV became available. It was a Panasonic DS1. Did the same as yourself transferring old VHS tape content onto DVD, and indeed BD - you can 'squeeze' a lot of tape onto 25 GB Blu Ray!
I had seen old cine film of a friends buses & trains from the 1960s and that set me off at 17 on cine film. But it was very fiddly, joining it together, no sound, a ball ache to watch and VERY expensive for a 5 min silent film. In 1985 i went onto night work and my pay went up £30.00 a week (a fair bit then and only 18 myself) so i invested in the latest video camera at Dixons (remember them?). I knew i need something that went straight to an E180 in order not to loose quality and the M1 was one of the first out, and panasonic were a good make. I think the results have stood the test of time, they seem to be very popular here on TH-cam!
Soi Buakhao assets.catawiki.nl/assets/2018/7/22/7/5/6/75653a53-a9bf-42d4-9166-159f8c01da06.jpg almost as beautiful a machine as the trains :-P
Man. What was spotting in the BR days like? I was born in ‘05 and only started spotting properly in 2019, what manner of things have I missed out on?
You'll get a good idea by checking out my channel! Most of my filming was done before you were born, so you can see what you missed......
James, them were the days! Proper locos on proper trains. Wish I had a time machine to go back with a digital camera and record it all properly not just saving expensive film for the locos
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus that I shall, anything for the sound of those valentas
@@carlw61 i know, it’s a shame. Come to think of it, I only even went on an MTU, like, three times? I never got to see them properly
Was the signal at the end of Platform 1 numbered OO7? Please say it was so.
"Great Western Railway Goods Station" ghost lettering surviving in the background too.
Old Oak Common Signal Box used to control Paddington and the box code was indeed OO, so alll signal plates were prefixed with OO. So there would have been signals from OO1 upwards......
How times change, workmen standing just a few feet away from an on coming inter city 😮 & the bloke hanging out of the window of one of the carriages, you'd never see that now.....
Happier times......
A single 31 on load 13?!
Probably ECS to/from Old Oak Common......
always lucky lucky - paddington 😆
125er just yamaha colee
Fantastic this trains service videp... What's happen back freight train missing? See 0:47sec.
There is no freight trains on this vid! At o.47 secs you see the rear coach of a train heading west......
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Huh??... Why not the way to keep on together, running on time with it. Pretty poor jobs one freight train service create this train isn't.... Should place freight train stays on together and keep the train moving. Because is being delayed or operating problem the time is running late,.. It's such is poor service like this freight train run around to behind the carriage train line it is! 😓
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus he means "why aren't there locos top and tailing the passenger service"
@@CR47Ycam because locos are expensive pieces of kit and are worked intensively and not used as DVT's
@@DANEBLUEGNOME For someone wth English as your native language, your comments are atrocious and nonsensical...did you not go to school ?
Very nice! I was surprised to see InterCity colours so early... I thought that livery wasn't introduced until 1986!
These could well have been some of the very first to wear it!
To my of the bat knowledge the "Executive" Inter City livery go back as far as 1984 which later carried over into the Inter City Swallow livery in the late half of the 1980's
NSE livery was introduced 1986.
Carry on Soi, I love these video's from the last 10-15 years of British Rail before it all got privatised 😊
There are lots more to come!
First thing I remember seeing was 87012 Cœur de lion in inter-city on the WCML, that was 1984...BR experimented with 87006 City of Glasgow in a railfreight grey at the same time. If I remember correctly the first 86 was 86242 James Kennedy GC.
We called it APT livery back then.
why do the buildings look soo aged? was london really this dilapidated in the 80s?
Yes, transport was quite run down in the 1980s sadly.....
I remember visiting London in the 1980s as a young child and most of it looked in a very bad state. When we got back to my home town in the Midlands it was like going forward about 30 years. The complete opposite of today. 1985 was actually the low point as far as the population of London is concerned. It dropped to about 6.5 million that year, having declined every year since 1939. In 1986 it finally started to rise again, which it's been doing every year since then.
We're a business. Business wants to make a profit. That's all we think of.
That’s all the GWR thought of! And all the other private railway companies we once had
Why did western region diesels smoke more than any others?
Did they? Trains leaving Paddington had been idling for a while so on pull away they look smokey but that soon past once they were thrashed up after vleaving the station area.
HSTs all did that
They didn’t
Where are all the Class 31s at today?
Mostly scrapped! I think there is one certified for use on the main line but quite a few at preserved railways.
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus wow, only 1, they drank diesel for fun but they were very productive. It'd be nice to see more 31 out on the rails, sad that so many were scrapped
I've travelled by train a good deal since the early 80s. I could never understand why, before the mid 90s, you had 8, 10, 12-coach trains with a baggage car or at least a compartment, and plenty of seats. Now the longest train I last ravelled on was two Voyagers coupled together, horribly overcrowded, luggage everywhere, miserable. Isn't there some modern equivalent of the rake of Mk 2s and a luggage van that could be invented, or are we to just put up with crowded, cramped modern traction?
Well Trans-Pennine Express are getting some Mk5's with a 68 loco one end and a DVT the other. That's some sort of improvement. I think the 68 thrash quite well for a modern loco.
13:12!!!
Old school railway, that's how the job was done!
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus we live in Health and Safetyyy land nowadays...