My observation of trains has principally taken place in and around Southampton and it is hard to think of a better place as there is so much variety over the years.

The regular passenger services to London Waterloo have included a range of fast, semi-fast and slow services as well as branch line services direct to London such as from Lymington for example. There have been a range of local services and, of course, the Boat Trains from Southampton Docks.

Inter-regional services run to the North of England as do Cross Country services to the West. The service between Portsmouth and Cardiff in particular has always provided an interesting variety of motive power and stock. The service to London Victoria in more recent years has provided different liveries with the coming of privatisation.

There were postal and parcel workings into and through the central station. The docks have provided a vast range of goods traffic, notably banana vans. There were also several short branches around the docks.

Some traffic from Eastleigh Works passed through Southampton. However, much freight from Eastleigh Yards came through on the way to Fawley and Furzebrook branches. On the Fawley branch is Marchwood Military Depot and Fawley Oil Refinery. On the Hamworthy branch were fresh oil for bunkering ships and contaminated oil to remove; scrap metal; clay products and building aggregates. Furzebrook had oil and gas products also china clay.

There were cement terminals at Northam, Millbrook and Poole. Millbrook became a major Container Depot. At Redbridge there was a large engineers depot where rail panels were made up. Other traffic through Southampton has included clay products from Quidhampton, aggregates from Westbury and, more recently sand from Wool. The majority of the photographs are my own and, for the sake of completeness, even those of poor quality have been included. Some photographs have been gleaned from the internet where I do not have an example of my own. Observations are principally my own but some later postings are from others.

 
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