The Train now Standing...

Electric trains such as this were a major element of my routine in a bygone era in my life, back in the mid-late Eighties, when I lived in Coggeshall in Essex and worked up in London. Days would typically begin with a leisurely start, followed by a mid-morning drive to nearby Kelvedon, from where these trains - many of them newly resplendent in their Network SouthEast colours - would whisk me away to the Big City. Then, after a late shift, a sleep-in and an early shift the next day, the same trains would whisk me back home in time for tea.

Imagine my surprise to find this lone survivor, having been rescued from the cutter's torch, sitting beside the platform at Isfield here in Sussex - a location it could never have reached under its own power, even before Isfield station was closed (along with the Uckfield-Lewes link) back in 1969.