GB Railfreight Biomass and Container Freight at Manors Station

It has been a while since I last ventured out to Manors Station, which is located only around half a mile to the east of Newcastle Central Station.
Back in the day Manors was a grand and sizeable interchange, where the East Coast Main Line connected with the former Tyneside Electrics suburban line out to the coast via Wallsend and North Shields. That route is now severed from the national rail network, but is still operated by the Tyne and Wear Metro, which has its own station less than a minute's walk away.
Today Manors has an island platform, with one Northern Trains service calling every hour on the run to and from Morpeth (or occasionally Chathill). There is also a bidirectional goods line, which is used for slow freight and stock movements. The busy Heaton Traction Maintenance Depot is a further mile or so in the down direction.
On a fairly typical weekday you can expect to see 10-15 trains per hour at Manors, the majority of which are non-stopping express passenger services travelling between Newcastle and Edinburgh. In the early mornings and late evenings, with the daily passenger services winding down, there is a lot more freight activity.
This is the first of two videos I will be making from my afternoon visit to Manors. It shows two GBRf services passing through the station: the 6N22 Tyne Coal Terminal to Lynemouth Power Station biomass train; and the 4E04 Mossend to Doncaster iPort intermodal container train. My second video, which focuses on the passenger trains, can be viewed here: • East Coast Main Line P...
Today 6N22 is topped-and-tailed by GBRf class 60 locomotives 60085 "Snowdon" and 60095 "Whernside". Both of these locomotives sport GBRf's standard gold and blue livery. 6N22 consists of the usual rake of 24 loaded IIA-C biomass hopper wagons, each of which can hold 70 tons of material. These wagons, constructed by Nacco, are very distinctive and used almost exclusively on the Tyne-Lynemouth run. GBRf acquired 50 of them, for use in two rakes of 24, in mid-2017.
These trains normally run over the same route as the soon to be opened Northumberland Line. Significant engineering work is taking place prior to the route reopening to passenger trains later this year. This means biomass trains are being temporarily diverted via Morpeth and have to reverse at Bedlington. It also explains why they are currently running with top-and-tail locomotives.
Our second GBRf train, 4E04, is hauled today by 66717 "Good Old Boy", which again sports the standard GBRf gold and blue livery. Like Forrest Gump's proverbial box of chocolates, you never quite know the composition of this train until it departs Mossend Yard. Some days, like today, it's bustling with containers. Other days it is shorter and with quite a few empties.
Creeping up on the tail of 4E04, for all you Hitachi IET fans out there, we have LNER's 801218. This Azuma is running as 1E20, the 1500 Edinburgh to London Kings Cross.
Filmed on 25th April 2024.
Video created by Northumberland Snapper:
northumberlandsnapper.blogspo...
Footage was captured using a Panasonic HC-VX1; amzn.to/3vJnqNJ; fitted with a Rode VideoMic Go; amzn.to/3rpMeIA

[@stuking8005]

Top video loved the66 great place to film👍

[@NorthumberlandSnapper]

It's not bad, but not a lot of freight during the day. Not many station amenities either!

[@EXSKIN]

4E04 is always 15 flats and apart for a short spell in 2023, is now rammed with boxes again something to do with steel going to Daventry for a while but has come back to Donny IP.

[@NorthumberlandSnapper]

Thanks for that info. I didn't realise it was the same length each day.