I'm new to actually enjoying rail sims since TSW3 came out. And I've had fun playing with all the trains. But whoever designed the Class 31/1 BLU for Tees Valley, I see you, fellow lover of old junk that won't die. The little engine that shouldn't. The little engine that needs to go to court ordered rehab. The little engine that's your dodgy union rep. It's like that POS, 30 year old Cutlass that your one friend had in highschool. It wouldn't really die, thought it always seemed close. The detail the graphic designers gave to the rust and dirt. You can practically smell the Stella Artois and Player's butts stashed in the cab somewhere. Cheers to you, designer of the 31/1. The loco version of the girl in the pub you're about to make a terrible mistake with. 31's Winkin' by Chloe posted Jul 12, 2023 at 2:17 PM Ol Rust Guts by Chloe posted Jul 12, 2023 at 2:19 PM
Yes the 31 is a fine, fine piece of work and great to hear it'll be a layer on the new JT route if I remember rightly.
One of the best DLC in the BR Classic collection. The builder(s) nailed the ponderous physics and that lovely burbling sound build up. All it needs is a proper passenger consist for scenario planner, preferably some Mark Ones reskinned into blue and grey. And at some point it needs a native period route to operate on, Norwich towards Peterborough, Bristol towards Salisbury etc.
Honestly couldn't agree more! Been working my way through the 31 journey at the moment and I just love it! The sounds are great and there's something about the cab and the loco in general I just love! The physics are challenging and braking is a nightmare but that makes it all the more sweet to get right! Similarly to the 101!
She´s lovely. She´s underemployed and underrated. She teaches you planning and anticipation. And she´s a winner.
It's one of my favourite locos on TSW. My dad used to work on them when he was on the railways, he said they couldn't pull the skin off a custard and always sounded like they would explode. That's been replicated brilliantly in game
Love the screen shot capturing the snow. I can just imagine trundling along on an early morning run with the heater blowing some warm air in for comfort lol. Probably my favourite diesel at the moment.
I remember setting off from Norwich behind one towards Birmingham in the latter days of loco haulage on that route. Wife in tow, plan was to go via Birmingham back to Swindon via Cheltenham. Despite the great thrash, pulled the plug at Peterborough and bailed for a HST to the Cross then over to Paddington and home. Not for nothing was Norwich to Brum known as the never ending journey!
I bet your wife was really chuffed at that lol. I remember when they operated on the Bedford-bletchleys, I had a couple of trips (Thanks to my working on the railways we were all eligible for a free pass) and I went sleep on both occasions, that route always has that effect on me, bit like Derby to Crewe lol
Although ironically Bedford to Bletchley and Derby to Crewe would both actually make for good short to medium distance routes in TSW. My last trip on the former was when the old St John's station was the terminus and the service worked by Cravens DMU's!
My memories are mainly of the Bescot based 31's of the early 90's. It was an eclectic mix of 31/1s, 31/4s and 31/5s, including skinheads, in liveries including Civil Link, Departmental Grey, Inter City Mainline, Original Railfreight Grey and BR Blue. You couldn't take a train journey around Brum without bumping into one. But my favourite memory was from Slough, on a hot summers morning at around 7am. Double-headed 31's pulling a heavily loaded aggregate train from a standing start out of the loop and through Platform 5. The noise...
I like that everyones happy with their white, modern, one handle spaceship but I think im going to stick to the battered, blue shouty machine with no brakes instead!
Definitely up there amongst the best. Agree we need more routes for it (and just more BR Blue in general)
I dare you to say that in the 700 feedback thread!!! Just damping down the flames for having the temerity to suggest it's a boring train on a boring (section of) route. But each to their own, hey.
Well the new JT route is going to be BR blue era isn't it? Early to mid 80s? Will the 31 likely to be usable on that? Or is it too late?
Fairly certain there has been a broad hint the 31 will feature greatly. I have an old Railscene cab ride DVD from Manchester to Barrow in the late 80's which is Class 31 hauled and there were Pacers passing the train between Manchester and Preston. So yes they did work in the same era.
Oh I quite enjoy driving the Class 31. The sound, the slow speed, and a look out of the front window too. I think because the front window goes a little lower, it actually looks like you're going faster than you really do. It's a loco I wish I could use for more routes. I'd encourage more artistic liberty on the timetables to allow the Class 31 on any BR Blue era timetable, as well as many many many railtours.
Oh, great shot! The 700 is a fantastic machine, but certainly no match for classic traction and its charm. Love the 31 and I’ll be really happy when it gets more to run on.
I do think it is a shame there are no services for the class 31 on NTP, maybe if there is ever a timetable refresh it could be added. It is one of the best locos in the sim and feels wasted on the TVL. It does sound like it will be available on the new JT route, however if it is only between Preston and Blackpool it won't be much of a run for it. Still it will be great to have a new route to run on it.
Yeah they would both make decent end to end routes on TSW. Everytime I did Bedford-bletchley was on a different form of traction, First it was the 121s, then the 31s, then 150s. I had intended to do a 230 but that's not happening anymore lol. Even though the route to Crewe via Derby (From Leicester) is bland for me, it's preferable than going via the West Coast.
I think there have been subtle hints etc on the roadmap articles. I think it was mentioned there or at least something was.
It is the only part of the roadmap article I remember. To quote the roadmap directly: "When driving our route, you will find significant changes to the timetable you drive depending on which season you are driving in, thus providing a wealth of possibilities, alongside this, our use of layers, which will interact with other add-ons that you may own like the BR Class 31 spawning on passenger diagrams for example, will mean you will never be certain on what might turn up, just like the good old days of BR! We are so looking forward to you seeing it!" To my eyes that is essentially confirmation that the 31 will be a layer and on passenger diagrams as well, which is a bonus!
I do so want this route but fear as it hasn't even had the location properly revealed we are looking into the autumn at least.
Same here, I really want it to release ASAP but then I keep reminding myself of the result when things are rushed... ...I don't want this to go down that (sorry but it's the only word for the situation) route.
Random question and only slightly OT: Has there ever been a documented case of a DMU or other passenger focused unit (eg. HST) being used to pull freight eg. due to a unit failure or other unavailability scenario? I ask as I had a random service yesterday on TVL I think, where a diesel loco was hauling a 101 for some reason, so wondered if the reverse ever happened Excluding mail vans here, which I think at some point had an HST engine (could be wrong)
Other than authorised tail traffic, I can’t recall an instance of a DMU being used to haul or assist loco hauled stock. Suspect there would be braking issues for one thing.
This is an interesting photograph, no idea of the back story!! Source: https://www.wolvertonrail.com/acatalog/Locomaster-The-Traction-Series.html
On 29th January 2022, a TPE Nova 3 set (loco hauled with a class 68) rescued a failed freight service on the ECML in the Colton Junction area which had blocked the line between York and Doncaster. It hauled the entire freight train into Holgate sidings but the DT was at the front. Here's a video from Railcam UK of the Rail Adventure HST powercars hauling some track machine at York whilst a Network Rail HST test train also passes through and they exchange tones (it was like Close Encounters of the Third Kind). As for TVL and a diesel loco pulling a class 101, that's part of the timetable with the class 31. I think it was to give the class 31 something to do to pad out the timetable, possibly to simulate unit failure. Not sure if it ever happened in reality though.
If it was to simulate a failed 101 it wouldn't happen often and the DMU would probably been taken out of service at the first opportunity.
That’s the back of the train though and the DMU car is being hauled by a locomotive taking all kinds of stock for a ride to somewhere. It’s all in the description.
In the last days of first gen units, (particularly in the Northeast and Cumbria) they suffered from frequent failures and locos would be couple up and operate them.
The GCR had occasion to utilise a Class 20 hauling a failed DMU https://www.gcrailway.co.uk/2016/01/class-20-thunderbird/
On some of the Welsh lines, it was common practice to have a standard power-twin DMU (that is, a 2-car unit in which both vehicles are Driving Motors) haul a couple of vacuum-braked vans behind it, allowing a parcels/newspapers service to be maintained in that part of the country. That was largely because of the very low axle-load limit of these lines (controlled by a small number of weak bridges) which excluded most actual locomotives. The axle load of such a DMU is considerably below even the exceptional Class 37 (RA5), and it has enough reserve power to haul a third carriage, let alone a couple of vans. I imagine something like an 03 or 04 would have been permitted though, as those were RA1 and could reach 25mph or so. Perhaps those were used for maintenance trains. I think the situation for TVL was that they wanted to put in some Type 2 passenger services to give some variety to driving the 31, but they didn't have any suitable carriages at the time to put behind it. The Mk.2 set from NTP would likely have been used, if they were available. So since the 101 can be hauled as vacuum-braked passenger stock, that's what they did. Incidentally, I've seen the Wensleydale Railway do pretty much exactly this as well, but with a steam loco. I very much doubt that the Paxman Valenta (the more famous of the various HST power car engines) was ever used in a humble mail van. The Paxman Ventura, however, was used in the Class 14 diesel-hydraulic and for re-engining some of the terrible NBL locos, which made them Class 29 and improved their reliability considerably. I understand the 29s were retired due to being non-standard rather than for any particular remaining technical failing. Confusingly, the Metrovick Co-Bo had a Crossley engine, which Crossley called the HST, but was completely unrelated to anything Paxman ever made… and if you ever suggested it, I expect Paxman would have set you straight very firmly. None of Crossley's attempts at a railway diesel engine were at all successful. There was talk of putting an English Electric engine in the Co-Bos, which would certainly have been an improvement, since aside from the engine they were reasonably sound locos with some unique capabilities for the power class.
That's a really neat picture, I do like photos of rail shenanigans that are out of the ordinary Yeah this was a full service from Saltburn to Darlington that quick drive threw up, don't recall it coming up with a scenario title so I assume it was timetabled I think this is the kind of thing I was trying to think of, where unique circumstances would necessitate a DMU being leveraged for additional duties. Maybe something similar occurred in Highlands and Islands or other remoteish locations? By engine here I meant loco. It was the travelling post office I was thinking of, but that apparently never used a 43 so no idea where I got that idea from. That said, apparently some 43 units have been bought by a rail freight company to haul wagons of some kind: And GBRF may have some fingers in the pie too: Sauce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_43_(HST) Thanks to all of you for providing good responses to an arguably stupid question!
There would definately be occassions where a diesel would rescue a failed unit. I wouldn't imagine that loco would spend the rest of the day hauling the unit like it was a set of carriages. The unit would likely have been towed back to the depot after it had completed the journey it failed on. I could be wrong however. I remember around the very early 90's a class 31 and a mix of four mark 1's and early mark 2's being often seen on the Stourbridge line, I think Tyseley had a unit shortage at the time. I am sure in those days depots likely had some carriages lying around for such occassions and/or there would have been carriages somewhere reasonably close by.
Quite right, in my defence (Not much of a defence admittedly lol) I was knackered and not had much coffee, genuinely don't know how I missed it.
Oh yes, if you dig deeply enough you can find all kinds of weird combinations of rolling stock resulting from a "rescue" operation. There was the time a Jubilee on a railtour had to get a freight train hauled by a 50 unstuck over Ais Gill, or when an Electrostar hit a tree and was later dragged back to the depot (at walking pace) by the power cars of a preserved Hastings unit. As for HSTs, once a derailment required the (fortunately few) passengers to be brought forward into the Guard's van in the leading power car, which was then uncoupled from its set and run forward solo. When the chips are down, you use what's available and can be made to work. The use of DMUs to haul light freight trains in Wales was, however, established and regular working practice for the region, occasioned (as I said) by the lack of locomotives authorised to work on those particular lines. I understand the relevant bridges are presently undergoing upgrade works, so locomotive-hauled trains may yet return to them. As for freight-oriented DMUs/EMUs, the obvious example here is the Class 325, a dual-voltage 100mph EMU dedicated to Parcels traffic. There were also some Motor Vans used in the southeastern network area, on a similar principle to the Welsh DMUs but with somewhat more power behind them.
The evening Workington-Redcar diagram in the early 80s was something the whole town could hear. Half the time it was a pair of 37s, and you could hear them from Skiddaw*, but when the same load was left to a pair of 31s it was pure Armageddon *ok, Siddick…
Maybe not what you’re really asking, but back in the late 70s/early 80s the last DMU out of Workington of a weekday would have an old ex-SR(!) PLV attached for the leg to Carlisle…?
It needs a rake of NTP MKII's putting behind it for TVL because they didn't always haul knackered 101's
To give the Class 31 a decent passenger outing, if you have Diesel Legends of the GW you can find these hauling 5 or 6 coach consists on the Paddington to Reading and vv semi fasts. A chance to give it a bit of welly and once you get past West Drayton on the Down wind up to a bit of speed. You lose time hand over fist on what were actually DMU schedules but what the hey.
