7th April 2000

Change was afoot with Freightliner, with Class 66s on order and the small 12-strong fleet of Class 57 were holding sway on some of their services as the Class 47s were being phased out. The 57s were pretty impressive in my opinion, and although I saw a few of them, their time with Freightliner was relatively short, once the 66s took hold of everything.

At 09.50 we see 57004 "Freightliner Quality" and 57009 "Freightliner Venturer" double-heading the 4O18 05.17 Lawley Street to Soithampton service into platform 2 for a crew change. 57009 was actually DIT (Dead in Transit), and the train included car carriers at the rear.