AS a student, and photographer of Cornish Railways for over five decades, information came to hand that a Class 56 was going to be trialled on Cornish china clay workings. The idea was for a single Class 56 to perform the tasks then undertaken by pairs of Class 37s, especially the‘Silver Bullet’train of china clay slurry contained in bogie tankers, which ran from English China Clay’s Burngullow site in Cornwall to the Caledonian Paper Company in Irvine, Scotland.
This occasioned a somewhat eccentric overnight drive from West Sussex to Lostwithiel to photograph this unique event. Arrival at Lostwithiel was before 07.00 and, sure enough after a short wait, coal sector-liveried No. 56013 entered the down goods loop at 07.05 heading 11 CDA wagons that it had hauled fromTavistock Junction, east of Plymouth. Attached is the only photograph I have ever seen of the working.