Flashback Friday -The Class 33s

For Christmas I received a copy of Simon Lilley's excellent book 'The Class 33s - A Sixty year History' http://www.crecy.co.uk/the-class-33s Growing up on the Hampshire/Sussex border in the 1970s and 1980s Class 33s were a familiar sight. In fact, other than the Electro-Diesel Class 73s and the occasional visiting Class 47, they were for a long time the only locomotives that we saw among the constant procession of EMUs. It's been an enjoyable read and I've certainly found out a lot of things I didn't know about these familiar engines.

Looking at the well illustrated volume has been quite a nostalgic exercise, seeing many of my favorite individual class members and even reading about a few events at which I was present. In the mid 1980s I decided to try to photograph as many of the class as I could, only a handful having been withdrawn by that time. If memory serves, by the time of large scale withdrawals in the 1990s I'd photographed all but one or two of the 33/0s, all of the push-pull fitted 33/1s and was only short of two of the slim-Jim 33/2s.

Unfortunately, most of my photographic collection from the 1980s is not accessible to me in the current lockdown but I have had a sort through some images from the early 1990s including these two from late 1992:

A personal favourite was 33 008 'Eastleigh'. Named in 1980, in 1986 Eastleigh depot started a gradual process of restoring it's original and attractive green livery. This was retained until 1990 when it was repainted in the departmental grey/yellow 'Dutch' livery. Happily, Eastleigh were allowed to restore the green livery in 1992 and it is in this condition, with original D prefix numbers, that I saw it at Salisbury on 18th October that year.

A few weeks previously, on 13th September, I took this picture of 33 102 at Bournemouth Depot open day. This is far more typical of the way that I remember the class in day to day service.

Although cited for withdrawal in the 1990s, amazingly a few Cromptons soldiered on to work on the privatised railway network of the late 1990s. A small number are  still to be seen at work on mainline duties, including three with West Coast Railways.

Slim Jim 33 207 is seen at Yeovil Junction in July 2017 when involved with the working of the 'End of Southern Steam' railtour which it top 'n' tailed with 34046 Braunton. The Crompton worked the non-steam leg from Yeovil Junction to Weymouth via Yeovil Pen Mill. Hopefully it wasn't my last mainline run behind a Class 33.