Woking to Basingstoke - Hastings DEMU cab ride - 13 May 2017

[@railroaddude100]

I am a retired train driver from the USA, AM ENJOYING YOUR VIDEOS VERY MUCH!

[@7brr1940]

Very enjoyable. I do like your cab rides.

[@bobmacdonald6183]

Excellent video. The added information makes it so much more interesting. Thank you. Bob Mac.

[@RichardFelstead1949]

Ditto.

[@roberthaydon7973]

10/10 for not cutting out any acceleration, braking, cruising or coasting. Also for the best sound reproduction I've ever heard on KZbin & engaging & informative commentary. :)

[@hastingsdiesels]

Thank you, glad you liked this method of production.

[@Thomas-cp6qe]

This is a top notch video. Good quality with the driver's eye view and the info enhances it. I find it an enjoyable escape, for a while anyway. Thanks..

[@richardarcher3254]

Fabulous footage. Have enjoyed all your videos. The sound of the purring Diesel engines brings back fond memories of the time when I travelled up to Cannon Street/Charing Cross from Warrior Square back in the Seventies.

[@hastingsdiesels]

Thank you Richard, glad you enjoyed them!

[@johnkeepin7527]

Enjoyable to watch, and good captions en route. It reminded me that at least a decade ago I did some work on a feasibilty study re converting Woking Junction to a flyover; evidently it didn't go anywhere, at least not yet.

[@andypreston1524]

Just love that art-deco signal box at Woking, great that it's listed too. I was gutted when my two local boxes, Hampden Park and Polegate were destroyed, went in both when I was a kid !!😢😢

[@HenrysAdventures]

Brilliant footage! I traveled on this section of the South Western Main Line many times but never seen it from this view!

[@SteveCarrett]

An excellent video of a cab ride, I enjoyed watching this, well done and thank you.

[@pjaygeorge8016]

Grew up in Reading and so traveled many of your routes in the 40s thru 60s by train (steam! except electric from Reading South through Wokingham toward Waterloo) and by road. Have just enjoyed this run at my desk in Philadelphia suburb following your rail route (and helpful captions) with an old Shell road map (1972). At my age, this is my answer to "you need to get out more often". Keep up the good work.

[@hastingsdiesels]

Thank you, glad you enjoyed!

[@richardwestwell4902]

Thanks for a nostalgic ride to Basingstoke. Pity rain spoiled the next part as I will miss going through my old home town of Eastleigh. Thoroughly enjoy all your footage from various parts of the U.K.

[@hastingsdiesels]

Sorry about that, but don't worry because I love that section too and will show footage of it from a 2018 outing in due course.

[@richardwestwell4902]

@@hastingsdiesels Looking forward to it. Thanks!

[@richardwestwell4902]

@@hastingsdiesels Looking forward to it. Thanks!

[@atlanticcoastexpress]

Many thanks for the video...which wasn’t spoiled by the weather! Brought back many memories for me. Woking SR signal box was always crewed by excellent signalmen and a station announcer. On the left at Woking Junction you can just see the now closed Woking Electrical Control Room (ECR) , with an amazing Art Deco 1930s control panel almost completely surrounding the control desk (inside the forbidding concrete bunker style building). This is now opened usually once a year to the public and is well worth a visit. It once controlled the 3rd rail d.c. supply down to Liss on the Portsmouth Direct, to Sturt Lane on the SW main line, down to Alton and over to Reading and up to Walton on Thames. Booster substations and track paralleling huts were added on the main SW main line after I left in 1977. Eastleigh ECR now supervises the old Woking and Havant ECR systems. Incidentally, I often used to travel home to Eastleigh via the Alton to Winchester line ‘Over the Alps’ as the Hampshire Demu drivers used to call it. It was a privilege to ride up Medstead bank with the driver...often in either of the two coach units 1121 or 1122, stalwarts on the ‘Alps’ branch. What a shame the Alresford to Winchester Junction section has gone forever. Thanks again for your excellent video. Rob.

[@squarewheelsorguk]

Thank you for this, Rob. Your input and memories are good to hear! Wow, you got to go 'over the Alps' and through to Winchester City in a DEMU... those were the days. In my youth I made it my business to explore many sections of old railway in that area, and visited Itchen Abbas, Winchester Junction and much of the Didcot Newbury & Southampton Rly between Shawford and Newbury. With my @HastsingsDiesels hat on, I'm glad to advise that we took the Hastings DEMU 'over the Alps' just over a year ago, and I'm expecting to publish such footage in due course... you will get to re-live something of those memories, albeit at 25mph.

[@atlanticcoastexpress]

Thanks for your reply Richard! I used to love hearing the AWS bell ringing in the DEMU cab. The BR station staff at Alton often couldn’t be bothered to go over to the platform to give the Southampton train the right of way. Instead, they used to announce over the public address system “Right away diesel” ...which often could not be heard over the Diesel engine thumping away. Unit 1128 had the quieter Dorman engine...so you could hear it then! Incidentally....did you know that Sir Sam Fay (later the boss of the Great Central) start d his railway career at Itchen Abbas? From little acorns grow great railwaymen! Best wishes, Rob.

[@mikecawood]

Excellent and picture quality of high standard.

[@tonyday7233]

I used to love the old slam door stock, the clunk of the brass handled doors, the clatter of the compressor under the floor, and that lovely train smell. Looks like corals coal yard has gone from Farnborough station.

[@tonyday7233]

Thank you for the kind thought.

[@robertcoleman4861]

Another fine video well done cheer's bob.

[@susanwassall361]

13.58 the Chord to the North Downs Line according to reference Books, was never connected to the main line & was just a long siding from the "up" Reading line

[@tonyday7233]

When back in the UK in 1979 i worked on a Pway gang out of Winchfield, and living in Basingstoke i both traveled and worked on this line. our ganger named "Joe' would not have one piece of ballast left on a sleeper. All the lineside gangers concrete huts look derelict, what happened to them, also a lot of wet beds along the track.

[@stephenrice4554]

I worked on the Woking patch in the 80s and 90s the gangers had some very firm ideas about how the track was left , stone bashing took up a bit of each day . Great video 👍🇬🇧

[@PrinceJohn84]

You can just imagine how this route used to be back in the 1950s/60s. Bulleid Pacific's speeding along between the coast and the capital. Miles of straight, uninterrupted quadruple track. What an impressive sight it must have been.

[@tonyday7233]

I was a kid living in Cove before moving to Worthing and eventually Australia, but i well remember the Merchant navies, west countries, King Arthur's. There used to be a weekly working of an extremely well polished tank engine that came from Farnborough yards up through the streets of Cove to the military base. Maybe someone out there who has clearer memories of this working, the engine was named INVINCIBLE, on a very shiny brass plate.

[@formidable38]

Another excellent video, thank you! Please upload the rainy one!!!

[@hastingsdiesels]

Thank you. But if I upload the rainy one I’ll have to duplicate all the work when I make the sunny 2018 version... trying to keep my workload tolerable for now (but never say never!)

[@iainmaturin8460]

The bridge at 12.44. Is in an area called Deepcut, which was named after the excavation work that took place building the railway

[@hastingsdiesels]

I thought the excavations which gave the area its name related to the Basingstoke Canal.

[@gb5uq]

I really must get myself booked up for a tour next year. That old thumper is calling my name now every video I watch...

[@ianthompson9201]

Addictive! Thanks.

[@paulshorney3465]

Growing up in Basingstoke I've done this line a good few times! 😀👍

[@neilwilliams8741]

memories there im ex welsh guard .pirbright and remember going to brookwood cemetery and then to the fox and pub ...late 70,s my dad also a guardsman was there in 52...

[@AndreiTupolev]

You can see more of the passing scenery from the slow line! Unusual overtaking move by train on slow line near the beginning. Had you come onto the SW main line at Byfleet junction?

[@hastingsdiesels]

We had come up from Guildford into Woking where we reversed in the Fast platform for 9 minutes as booked. The undertaking 159 seems to have been intentional, it is unusual I agree but we ran as booked.

[@Robbi496]

Something unique about British Trains? I cannot verbalize it, but they are unique!

[@paulwhitear4983]

Excellent video. What were the blue diamond shape markers every so often

[@AndreiTupolev]

they're mileposts, every quarter of a mile

[@nickrobson9636]

28:54 The pub nearby is actually called Barton's Mill?

[@hastingsdiesels]

:) That may be so. That pub used to be Old Basing Mill anyway, by the looks of things. I found the name of the siding on the Sectional Appendix, on page 608 of the Kent / Sussex / Wessex file at www.networkrail.co.uk/industry-commercial-partners/information-operating-companies/national-electronic-sectional-appendix/

[@roboftherock]

At 4'40 approx was that a flashing yellow above the 159 or phasing due to digital photography?

[@hastingsdiesels]

Ah, good spot! It's a flashing double-yellow; the next one would be flashing single yellow, and the one after that is at the end of the Brookwood platform which would have taken it across onto the Down Fast. It and our train swapped lines, in effect.

[@itsmeintorrespain2714]

Not so sure it was a diesel that overtook on the Down Slow at 4:07

[@AndreiTupolev]

Yes, a Class 159 DMU

[@itsmeintorrespain2714]

@@AndreiTupolev Correct- I didn't recognise the unit.

[@TheSm0wman]

@@AndreiTupolev The DMU usually leaves from P4 at Woking and runs on the Down Fast line to Basingstoke so it seemed odd to start the Hastings from P4 and run it on the Down Fast line causing them both to switch lines at Brookwood.

[@peckelhaze6934]

Does the reduce power signs apply to electric as well? Are they for coasting reasons? A great video.

[@hastingsdiesels]

They apply specifically to electric trains - not to ours at all. I believe it's because of a temporary reduction in the capacity of the power supply in that section.

[@peckelhaze6934]

@@hastingsdiesels - Right! Thanks for that answer. Much appreciated.

[@robertle3038]

0:30 Who is that guy? WHO is he?

[@iainmaturin8460]

Hastings units were often rostered to run the early morning service from Tonbridge to Reading back in the 70's, alternating with a class 33 and MK1 stock. Happy days

[@Rog5446]

Can this DMU pick up power from the third rail?

[@hastingsdiesels]

No.

[@paulhill1665]

Allways find it strange the amount of debris left by the track, all those old rails must be worth something as scrap.

[@hastingsdiesels]

It probably costs more than the scrap value to recover them - they are incredibly heavy, and there's many hours' work to cut them into very short lengths that can be lifted out. All has to be done overnight when no trains are running too.

[@bishwatntl]

The road bridge at 23:30 is not the A3 - probably the M3.

[@andyg4644]

It's the A30.

[@hastingsdiesels]

You're right it isn't the A3, a slip of my finger there; as Andy G says it is the A30. (The M3 has already crossed the line and doesn't re-cross it until Shawford.) I've added an Erratum to the notes.

[@bishwatntl]

Thanks - I have often driven on the M3 and I should have recognised that the bridge is at the wrong angle - I just spotted your caption earlier at 20:45 - I had not twigged how close that crossing is to Winchfield.

[@dieseldave3879]

🚂👍