Passenger Services and Rolling Stock Before Privatisation
Steam traction was replaced by 3R (Class 206) DEMUs on 4 January 1965. The new trains consisted of two 6S (class 201) coaches from the Hastings Line coupled to adapted 2EPB driving trailer units. As a result of the visible difference in width between the narrow Hastings Line stock and the standard width Hampshire trailer, the units were nicknamed Tadpoles. Additional peak time services were hauled by class 33 diesel locomotives until May 1977.
The express service from Reading to Gatwick Airport was launched on 12 May 1980 using three-car class 119 DMMUs, based on the Western region. The trains were especially modified for this service to create extra luggage space: the buffet counter in the centre coach was removed. Class 101 three-car units were later used on the route as well.
All of the stations between Shalford and Betchworth inclusive, were recommended for closure in the Beeching Report of 1962. The report recommended that the whole of the North Downs Line should be developed as a trunk route.
Read more about this topic: North Downs Line
Famous quotes containing the words passenger, services, rolling and/or stock:
“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a wheel rolling on its own, a prime movement, a sacred Yes.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers; and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him; because I don’t take no stock in dead people.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)