Possibly the perfect railway photograph! What could be better than a rail blue Class 50 on a train of blue and grey stock complete with blue GUV, pictured in lovely soft early morning spring light. 50001 Dreadnought pulls away from Oxford station on 2 April 1983 with the 1A10 06:00 Hereford to Paddington service. The loco, which is surprisingly clean for a Class 50 at the time was the fourth of the class to be refurbished and one of only six to be released from Doncaster in the original livery. Note the crudely applied number one on the former headcode box. 

An easy race! 50001 Dreadnought runs parallel with a Mk2 Ford Escort estate on the approach to Combe with the 08:00 Hereford to Paddington service on 4 October 1986. Although by this date Network SouthEast had been launched, the Cotswold Line was still predominantly rail blue, with just one Inter City coach breaking up the uniformity here.

50001 Dreadnought passes Deepcut on 28 August 1987 with the 1O15 09:38 Exeter St Davids to Waterloo Network SouthEast service. Probably because the class was so common in the Oxford area, this is one of the few occasions that I spent a day photographing 50s on the former Southern Railway route to the west, before the frantic activity of their last days in 1991. Dreadnought's large logo livery is getting a little tatty, and it wouldn't be long before it would be repainted into NSE red, white & blue. It would skip the first two versions of this livery and emerge in the final form.

50001 Dreadnought passes Combe on 2 October 1988 with the 1B31 13:45 Paddington to Hereford service. Only the rear coach spoils an otherwise completely uniform rake of Network SouthEast Mk.2s, the loco also being in matching NSE livery (the second version but before a darker a shade of blue was used). Ironically two years previously I had photographed the same locomotive in a very similar spot, but coming from the opposite direction.

50001 Dreadnought pulls away from Whitchurch station on 17 June 1989 with the 1O16 06:45 Exeter to Waterloo Network SouthEast service. This is one of the few pictures that I took on this line before 1991. With the imminent demise of the 50s, 1991 turned into a mad panic year, with virtually every spare day spent photographing them on the route to make up for lost time!

With the church of St John the Baptist prominent in the background, a filthy 50001 Dreadnought pulls away from Tisbury with the 09:15 Waterloo to Exeter St Davids service on 2 February 1991. I had taken very few photos on the Waterloo to Exeter line prior to this, but the impending withdrawal of the Class 50s meant that virtually all free time during 1991 was devoted to photographing them on this former Southern Railway route. Obviously in previous years there were plenty of 50s in my native Oxfordshire to keep me busy!

50002 Superb passes FWP Matthews flower mill at Shipton with the 1A18 07:00 Hereford to Paddington service on 19 July 1986. The lamposts on the right indicate the presence of Shipton station, but neither this nor most of the other services on the line stop at this diminutive halt. Apart from the vehicles (both road and rail!) this view is pretty much the same nowadays, if only one could see it, as uncontrolled tree growth has now obstructed this viewpoint. However, FWP Matthews is still a thriving family owned business producing high quality organic flower.

50002 Superb certainly lives up to its name as it races through Winchfield on 28 August 1987 with the 1V15 15:10 Waterloo to Exeter St Davids Network SouthEast service. Although a bit of a shock at the time, the original version of Network SouthEast livery was certainly impressive on the Class 50s, and in my view preferably to the later version. It has to be said the inclusion of so much white in the livery was bound to show up the dirt, but at least the roof was painted black!

50002 Superb climbs Goodrington Bank with the 16:30 Paignton to Kingswear service on 16 October 1993, whilst taking part in the Paignton & Dartmouth Steam Railway's Class 50 Spectacular. Perfect low autumnal lighting, waves on the beach, and a blue almost unrefurbished (if you ignore the headlight) Class 50, what more could you ask for? Perhaps the Goodrington Water Park in the background above the train doesn't exactly add to the view, but otherwise an excellent picture.

50003 Temeraire could always be recognised from a distance in the early 1980s by its white window frames. It is seen here arriving at Kingham on 4 June 1983 with the 07:05 Hereford to Paddington service. This was the time before Kingham became a busy commuter station and well before the era of the full properly surfaced pay and display car park! Note the old bridge abutment in the background, which was an excellent spot for photography in the 1980s, prior to the rampant tree and bush growth of recent years.

50003 Temeraire passes the site of Yarnton Junction, where the former Fairford branch line diverged from the Oxford to Worcester 'Cotswold Line'. The train is the 1B40 16:10 Paddington to Hereford on 29 June 1986. The loco carries the modified version of large logo livery, complete with black roof and red buffer beams, arguably the smartest and certainly the most practical version of this livery. The bank of rubble on the left is the site of the former station platform.

50004 St Vincent speeds past Stoke Orchard with the 1V72 09:00 Leeds to Penzance service on 13 March 1982. Bredon Hill can be seen on the right above some of the old orchards from which the nearby village is obviously named. This is near the site of Cleeve station, so called to avoid confusion with Bishops Cleeve station on the nearby former GWR Cheltenham to Stratford line. The village of Bishops Cleeve is located between the two routes.

50004 St Vincent passes the site of Moreton Sidings, between South Moreton and Didcot with the 11:15 Paddington to Oxford service on 1 December 1983. Before the obsession with health & safety, and the modern day security worries, it was quite common for enthusiasts to park on the site of the sidings to watch trains go by, just as the man in the white car is doing here. If you tried this now of course you would be evicted by the first Network Rail employee that turned up!

50005 Collingwood passes Evenlode on 16 February 1985 with the 07:05 Hereford to Paddington service. This is on the double track section of the Cotswold Line just south of Moreton-in-Marsh. The snow had been around for several days, but hadn't completely disappeared by the time the weekend came, and luckily the sun came out creating these ideal photographic conditions.

A work stained 50005 Collingwood passes Chilson with the 1B16 09:55 Paddington to Worcester Shrub Hill service on 31 August 1986, running approximately 20 minutes late. This location, which is incidentally the site of Charlbury water troughs, has become progressively more grown up since this photo was taken, although the dead elm tree in the background had gone by the following year. It used to be a favourite photographic spot of mine, as it is one of the few locations on the Cotswold Line where the sun is on the nose as early as midday (as here) for northbound trains. 

50005 Collingwood passes Chilson with ballast empties returning from Sunday Cotswold Line engineering work on 22 May 1988. The loco was not officially allocated to the DCWA engineers pool for another two months. I only ever saw two Class 50s used on engineering work on the Cotswold Line, 31s & 47s being more normal motive power for the extensive work carried out on the southern section of the line in 1984-6. The later version of Network SouthEast livery on a loco employed on an engineers train is certainly noteworthy.

50006 Neptune passes the site of Challow station on 12 August 1980 with the 1A01 08:31 Cheltenham to Paddington service. 50006 was the first Class 50 to be refurbished, and in common with the first few released to traffic was outshopped in plain blue livery and with the position for the new headlamp covered with a blanking plate, allegedly due to shortage of parts. It is seen in this condition here. Long before the reinstatement of the relief lines, the remains of Challow station are gradually being taken over by nature, and the well known local scrap and recycling firm Haynes of Challow were still using the old station site to store their vehicles.

50006 Neptune arrives at Kingham station with the 15:00 Paddington to Hereford service on 17 April 1982. All was not well with the loco, as it was misfiring badly. The explosive banging noise as it departed in a cloud of blue smoke was something I have never heard before or since from a loco in normal service (possibly a stuck exhaust valve?). Although still in rail blue livery, the loco is in refurbished condition (note the headlight and lack of sand fillers on the bodyside). It was in fact the first Class 50 to be refurbished, returning to traffic in November 1979.

50006 Neptune darkens the sky as it departs from Gloucester with the 1S61 07:47 Cardiff Central to Edinburgh service on 6 July 1985, which it would work as far as Birmingham New Street. Classmate 50004 St Vincent can be seen on the right waiting to follow it out with the 09:15 Gloucester to Swindon parcels. Gloucester cathedral dominates the skyline in the background.

A meeting of two classic loco classes at Hungerford Common on 3 September 1984. 50007 Sir Edward Elgar heads west with the 09:40 Paddington to Penzance, while 47240 passes with the what is presumably a HST substitute on the 06:28 Penzance to Paddington. Of course if such a situation arose today with a rail blue 47 approaching from one direction and a green 50 from the other, there would be some hesitation as to which to photograph. In 1984 it was simple, Sir Edward Elgar was green, and virtually everything else was blue!

50007 Sir Edward Elgar weaves onto the single track section of line at Ascott-under-Wychwood with the 1A18 07:00 Hereford to Paddington 'Cathedrals Express' on 10 September 1986. There is a rail enthusiast cat in this picture, which although not very obvious here, can clearly be seen on the original 6x7 Ektachrome slide. Sitting on the end of the wall on the left of the picture a tabby watches as the loco passes by. Usually the racket from a Class 50 sends most animals scurrying for cover, but this cat just sat and watched the train go by!

A far cry from its glory days as a passenger loco or its present day role as a preserved loco, 50007 Sir Edward Elgar ambles down the relief line at Pilning on 13 March 1989 with a train of track panels destined for South Wales. It is about to be overtaken by an HST before resuming its journey through the Severn Tunnel. 50007 was only allocated to the DCWA engineers pool for a short while (8 October 1988 to 14 May 1989), so pictures of it on such mundane duties such as this are not common. This is the only picture I have of it on anything other than a passenger train while in BR service.

50007 Sir Edward Elgar passes Old Basing with the 09:55 Honiton to Waterloo service on 28 April 1991. This celebrity loco was withdrawn a few months later, but was reinstated with the engine from 50046, and so lived on until the end of the class on the mainline in 1994. This section of line is virtually dead straight all the way from Basingstoke to Farnborough and was well known for fast running in the last days of Southern steam.

50007 Sir Edward Elgar & D400 have just passed Aynho Junction with the Rail / Network SouthEast Waterloo to Carlisle 'Carlisle Fifty Farewell' railtour on 11 April 1992. The sun finally having come out, after hiding behind banks of mist for much of the morning. This however, was not a taste of things to come, as the weather was just plain dull later in the day at Greenholme!

The solitary sheep in the field at Greenholme pays no attention whatsoever as 50007 Sir Edward Elgar & D400 sweep past with the Rail / Network SouthEast Waterloo to Carlisle 'Carlisle Fifty Farewell' railtour on 11 April 1992. Network SouthEast stock on the West Coast Mainline - whatever next!

On a very gloomy 7 November 1992, 50007 Sir Edward Elgar & 50033 Glorious pass the disused (and since demolished) signal box at Water Orton with the Pathfinder Tours 1Z42 05:17 Eastleigh to York 'Minster Marauder' railtour. By this date all the Class 50s with the exception of the two machines pictured here and pioneer locomotive D400 had been withdrawn from service. These three locos were then used for railtours until final withdrawal in March 1994.

After reversing at Exeter St. Davids, the Pathfinder Tours '50 Terminator' railtour is seen here passing through Totnes, hauled by 50007 Sir Edward Elgar & 50050 Fearless, running as the 1Z07 13:17 Exeter St. Davids to Penzance on 26 March 1994. This was the farewell tour to the Class 50s on the mainline. Ironically I turned up at this spot to see 50031 Hood return to the mainline in Autumn 1997 in similarly perfect sunny conditions.

'A symphony in green' (with apologies to the late Sir Edward Elgar). Elgar never got around to writing a green themed symphony, slightly surprisingly considering the pastoral nature of much of his music. I'm not sure what he would have made of this either, and I don't mean the odd combination of a green Class 50 on green Southern stock, running through the Leicestershire countryside! 50007 Sir Edward Elgar passes Woodthorpe on the Great Central Railway with the 2A10 11:00 Loughborough to Leicester North service on 12 September 2009, during the line's Diesel Gala. This is the first time that a Class 50 has visited this line.

50007 Sir Edward Elgar approaches Quorn & Woodhouse with the 2A30 14:25 Loughborough to Leicester North service, during the Great Central Railway's Diesel Gala on 12 September 2009. This loco was probably the highlight of the event, as the railway has never played host to a Class 50 before.

A real blast from the past! 50008 Thunderer approaches Ufton Crossing with the 1B74 12:23 Paddington to Paignton service on 16 September 1978. The loco had only been named two weeks previously, and was to wait another year before the ship's crests were added. It is still in unrefurbished condition, and at this time less than half way through its career on the national network, having being transferred from the London Midland Region to the Western Region two years before as a replacement for the Class 52 'Westerns'. This was one of my earliest railways photos, taken using a Praktica PLC2 and Kodachrome 64 film.

Its hard to believe now, but there was once an almost completely unobstructed view of Frampton Mansell Viaduct from the nearby field. On 28 August 1982, 50008 Thunderer crosses the viaduct with the 1A89 08:24 Cheltenham to Paddington service. Unfortunately I have few pictures of Class 50s on this line, as I spent most of my time photographing them on the other route across the Cotswolds - the Oxford to Worcester line.

50008 Thunderer approaches Grintleyhill Bridge, near Combe with the 08:05 Hereford to Paddington service on 17 September 1983. A typical late summer day that had started sunny but soon started to cloud up. Judging by the ominously dark clouds in the background and the fact that Whitehill Bridge in the background is already in shade, I think I was lucky to get this picture in the sun. This section of track was singled in 1971 and even now (2009) is not included in the Cotswold Line re-doubling plans.

50008 Thunderer races along the single track section of the Cotswold Line to the south of Charlbury, passing near to the village of Stonesfield with the 1A73 07:05 Hereford to Paddington service on 8 June 1984. Obviously fairly fresh from a repaint, the light grey roof is still reasonably clean apart from around the four exhaust ports. The inclusion of a GUV at the head of the train was typical for the period, giving far more storage for bicycles and other bulky items than is available on the equivalent train today!

50008 Thunderer speeds through Radley station with the 3A88 09:00 Oxford to Old Oak Common empty newspaper vans on 16 August 1987. Although the load of four empty vans may seem a ridiculous use of a Class 50, this train was actually booked for a pair of 50s, and indeed this is one of the few occasions I saw a single loco on it. The use of two locos was purely to get them back to Old Oak Common for the Monday morning rush hour trains. 

50008 Thunderer leaves Oxford with the 1F45 11:00 Network SouthEast fast service to Paddington on 21 October 1988. Strangely 50008 had been allocated to the DCWA engineers pool a couple of months prior to this picture and should therefore have been restricted to low speed departmental workings. Admittedly this was the last day that I saw it operating regular passengers trains, although of course in 1991 it was repainted into 'Laira Blue' and became a railtour locomotive. Note the revised shape crest above the nameplate, which was applied in 1986.

I do not normally bother photographing light engine convoys, but with one of my favourite Class 50s providing the power this one just had to done, despite the gloomy weather. Passing the site of Coalpit Heath station on 25 May 1991, celebrity pair 50008 Thunderer & 50015 Valiant haul 31511, 37904, & 37889 from Bristol Bath Road to Coalville, where all the locos would be on display at the open day. At this time both 50s were in the NWXC (Network SouthEast reserve) pool. In June 1991 they were both transferred back into the DCWA departmental pool, from which they had both been taken to be repainted into these one off liveries in January 1991. However, in their second time in the DCWA pool they did virtually no departmental work.

50008 Thunderer & 50015 Valiant pass Wrenbury with the Pathfinder Tours 1Z16 07:00 Hereford to Carlisle 'Wye Knot' railtour on 12 October 1991. Apologies for the poor technical quality of this picture, caused by the atrocious lighting conditions, which was really stretching the capabilities of the colour films of the time. However, every working of Thunderer whilst it was in 'Laira blue' livery is worth recording. For those interested this picture was taken with a Canon A1 on Kodachrome 200 at 1/1000sec f1.4, so obviously nothing at all in reserve if it got even slightly darker!

Shortly after sunset on 23 November 1991, 50008 Thunderer & 50015 Valiant pass through Bodmin Parkway station with the 1Z37 14:20 Newquay to Manchester Piccadilly 'Valiant Thunderer' railtour. Geoff Hudson, the BR area fleet manager who did so much to maintain the Class 50s during their last years at Laira can be seen standing up inside Thunderer's cab.

The highlight of the East Lancashire Railway's Diesel Gala on 6 & 7 March 2010 was the return to service in 'Laira Blue' livery of 50008. The immaculate loco is seen here passing Heap Bridge on Sunday 7 March with the 2J77 13:05 Heywood to Rawtenstall service. Although the shade of blue looks a little light, and the omission of the Thunderer nameplates gives the game away, this is certainly an excellent recreation of the 1991 period, and a welcome return to service of one of my favourite Class 50s.

50008, resplendent in its freshly applied 'Laira Blue' livery passes Burrs in superb late afternoon light with the 2J87 15:45 Heywood to Rawtenstall service, during the East Lancashire Railway's Diesel Gala on 7 March 2010. The return to traffic of the erstwhile Thunderer in this 1991 DCWA engineers pool livery was certainly the highlight of this event. 40145 East Lancashire Railway can be seen hitching a ride on the rear of the train.

50009 Conqueror makes a smoky departure from Oxford with the 1F07 07:08 Oxford to Paddington Network SouthEast service on 1 August 1986. Despite being loco hauled, this was a not an express service, taking 80 minutes to reach the capital, and calling at Radley, Didcot, Cholsey, Goring & Streatley, Pangbourne, Tilehurst, & Reading. Before the large car park was constructed on the site of the yard on the right in the 1990s, I used to visit this location frequently, often getting there at the crack of dawn (as here)!

A dull day at Wolfhall on the Berks & Hants Line on 2 July 1985 sees 50010 Monarch heading east with 09:32 Penzance to Paddington service. Monarch is one of the few 50s that I have only got a few pictures of, and I certainly never saw it when it had its blue roof whilst in 'large logo' livery. This was carried out at Landore Depot in 1983, allegedly because they hadn't got the correct paint!

Not quite a perfect reflection, but not a bad picture nonetheless. 50010 Monarch passes the fishermen on the Kennet & Avon Canal at Crofton with the 1C29 11:00 Paddington to Paignton service on 23 September 1986. Monarch was one of a handful of Class 50s that always seemed to elude me, and I only have a few pictures of it. This was the last time I saw it, despite it remaining in service for nearly another two years. Unfortunately it suffered an engine failure whilst hauling the 11:50 Glasgow to Plymouth train near Bromsgrove on 30 July 1988, and was towed to Laira the following day. There it languished for several years, before finally being cut up on site by staff from Coopers Metals, Cardiff.