The Rolling Stock Observer - introduction
Greetings!
Not only did I mis-spend my youth trainspotting but I also mis-spent it collecting coaching stock numbers. I have a fascination with numbers.
I did numerous "overnighters", traipsed round carriage sidings in the dead of night, visited scrapyards and railway depots for those elusive departmental vehicles and had a wonderful and
exciting time - but I was young then!
What is The Rolling Stock Observer?
Detailed observations of passenger and non-passenger carrying coaches and departmental stock observed at Chesterfield and around the country in the 1980s.
Who is it for?
If you want to know what coaches formed what trains and when, then this may be a helpful piece of reference work.
It could be useful for historians, modellers and anyone requiring detailed information about railway operations from a bygone age - perhaps?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
The site is separated into sections:
The unabridged list of all observations at Chesterfield as well as many locations around the country from April 1981 through 1986.
This section is included for completeness but can be "heavy going".
Selective vehicles from consists are included if they were a first time sighting, a first time sighting at Chesterfield or a renumbering.
This section lists complete consists of timetabled workings listed by originating station from April 1981 through 1986.
Lists of complete consists of sleeper workings on the West Coast, East Coast, South West and Scottish Internal lines with train locomotives and the working if known from April 1981 through 1986
This section lists complete consists of Postal trains also known as Travelling Post Offices listed by originating station from 1981 through 1986.
In the search box either input a vehicle number or a word to search for, this will bring up a list of dates, select a date then use "ctrl-F" to find what you're looking for on the page.
Upper and lowercase are treated the same and (for some reason I have yet to fathom out) the results do not stack in chronological order!
This is a very effective search box but does have it's limitations, for example it cannot differentiate between four and five figure numbers, so if you were to search for mk2 TSO "5853" it will also locate mk1 CK "15853" and mk1 SK "25853"