I would love Dovetail games to add a route with the class 50s in. Maybe Bristol Temple Meads down to Plymouth would be a good route for the game and it would be set probably in the 80s.
I and many others I'm sure, would love to see the Class 50 in game. I also like the route suggestion but think it should be Bristol Temple Meads to St Austell in order to link up with and layer onto WCL. I remember the 50s from their final months on the Salisbury and Exeter services around South West London in locations such as Wimbledon, New Malden and out as far as Woking. Awesome machines, just a shame they were lumbered with a route that ill suited their characteristics.
Part of Waterloo to Exeter, preferably west of Salisbury and including Honiton bank would be great. That way you could also layer in reskinned Class 33’s (along with Mark One blue/grey reskins) on the Yeovil terminators and relief trains or occasionally subbing for a failed Hoover.
The 33’s were probably better suited to Waterloo - Exeter. Being essentially an uprated Class 26 or 27 they were designed for slogging up and down hills. However handicapped by the 85MPH top speed and ponderous, if steady, acceleration. More recollections from my BR Control days, when I first started in there in 1989 as a relief controller, spent a fair bit of time on the traction desks. The 50’s on the Exeter line were by then, frankly a nightmare. The Southern drivers had a habit of using the straight air (loco) brake excessively so was not uncommon to get a call from Waterloo saying, “50xxx on 1Vxx is one journey to Exeter for brake blocks.” The fitters at Exeter were superb but no way could they change a set of blocks in the typical 45 to 50 minute turnaround. At that point we would end up pinching an engineering pool 50 (DCWA) to cover the back working, but these were artificially limited to 60MPH which pee’d off the Southern royally. There was also a fairly high failure rate which needed to be rescued then again the task of finding a fresh loco for the back working.
Back in my day (;-)!) 50s would run Brum - International - Coventry on the Paddingtons. Also an evening service Dorridge-Solihull-Brum; this was later extended through to Wolves. Happy daze!
