The Bristol Railway Archive

HI,
Last night a Network Rail working entered BTM - can anyone enlighten me as to its load. It consisted of two bogie flats with a total of 3 tanks and 3 groups of boxed equipment (at least two appeared to contain generators) Livery was blue and the tanks marked 'non-hazardous'. The wagons were topped and tailed by two 67s. Thanks

Possibly the water cannon train?

Seen here with class 20s:

http://photos.m-t-p.org.uk/p35629911.html

66s:

http://37682.fotopic.net/p35043325.html

and 37s!

http://j-eyres.fotopic.net/p35122192.html

The consist varies depending on where it is working.

I would say the water canon train too (if it looks like this):

Oh look at Mr "I've got much better pictures on my site"

When it comes to entertainment, you can't beat a foggy night at Temple Meads.

Shame about the motive power though!

It is a bloody good photograph of the train Temple Meads at night.

Cheers Michael, this is one of my favs. Got lucky because the loco had it's tail lights on which makes the exposure much easier.

Thanks: that's it! But what is it used for - I guess cleaning? Seems it's expensive on power - is that so it easily works in both directions?

It's supposed to remove the teflon-like coating of ground-up leaves from the railhead by blasting it with high pressure water jets, as an alternative to the gritty "Sandite" that has traditionally been applied, as this apparently gunges up point mechanisms and various electronics.

It's proved to be spectacularly useless, as the amount of slipping on climbs, and skidding through red signals has proved, but that's progress for you...