Forthcoming Additions

"I didn't want to get your hopes up ..."

Alleged quote by Alan Baylis to Mark Bennett explaining why he hadn't mentioned the Kidderminster - Tenby ADEX might be Class 25 hauled until the evening before it was due to run!

Well I don't want to get your hopes up now either but I've a lot of ideas as to what I can put up on this website in the coming years (so don't hold your breath!)

Photographs - I've still got a couple of hundred B&W and a few colour photographs of class 25's in action on both passenger and freight trains to put here as and when I can get them scanned from the original negatives/slides.  I have completed from 1982 back through to 1980 plus all my colour slides from other years.  I'm now working forwards from 1983 with the inevitable glut of summer Saturday trains on the Cambrian that dominated my photography towards the end of the Rats. (Eventually there will be about 1,000 photographs of Class 25 locos on this site).  I'm also going to start to include non-Class 25 photographs, these being ones relevant to the activities taking place on that day.  More of what I consider to be my best pictures will be available as full size screen size images, these being called my Signature Series photos because they get a signature watermark!  I'm always restructuring the index page to stop it becoming too long, apologies if it breaks a few search engine links in the meantime.  The purists amongst you might spot that the odd telegraph pole has disappeared to in a couple of pictures (good memory!) but may I refer your enquiries to Paintshop Pro and its clone tool for the answer.  Also please don't complain if all Aberystwyth pictures look the same, what do you expect!

Recollections - Maybe it was because I've always had a poor memory or perhaps because I was often asked why I had done a particular move (generally because it was a clown move it has to be said) that throughout the 80's I kept a diary of both my personal bashing moves and a 'Dear Diary' commentary.  This will enable me to recall some of the more exciting(!?) events that happened during my Rat Bashing career.  Not all are as exciting as the 100mph car journey to York for a relief train but I have both amusing and run of the mill stories to share with you when I get round to writing them up.  Hopefully you saw my article in Traction magazine, Issue 129 July 05, regarding the 'fun and games' we had with the Aberystwyth trains in 1983.  I'll be doing more of the same for this site.

Loco Workings - I've now got all the loco workings into a database although the individual loco and dated workings pages are actually created through Excel and stored separately.  This is not the same as I eventually hope to do as that will include a query based website allowing the creation of pages showing the last workings or the top Rat passenger mileage machines (25224 at the moment!).  However I appreciate that those using browsers other than Internet Explorer sometimes experience difficulties in getting the page displayed correctly first time.  (I test the site against four different Windows based browsers to see if it looks acceptable).  Whilst I find pressing refresh corrects this problem I know that is only a 'work around' but I don't think I can fix this before changing the site to a database driven website.  Can I remind you that if you know of any workings that don't appear here then please let me know via the link on the front page.  There must be lots of Crewe - Cardiff and Scottish gen still waiting to be captured for posterity.  I've now got records of over a million miles of Rat hauled trains (and no, I'm not thinking we can get that to two million!) but every new one is welcome.  I know some people use this site to identify old photographs and sometimes the odd working can add two or three others that fill in the gaps.

Performance Logs - I have about fifty timing logs of class 25s in action, and many more recording performance over Talerddig.  I'll be adding these once I've worked out how best to present them.

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