AS older readers will often relate – and some younger readers may get bored of hearing! – there was a time when you could see literally scores of locos at work during the course of a day, even into the 1970s and 80s after steam had been phased out. Multiple units were mainly confined to shorter routes, meaning locos were in charge of most medium and longdistance passenger trains, while freight activity was intensive – especially in areas of heavy industry where coal, steel and chemicals were the main types of traffic.
Nowadays, however, loco-hauled trains can be a rarity in many areas and you can often go on fairly long journeys with little hope of seeing one. But there are some still centre of activity for both freight and passenger trains worked either by locos or High Speed Train power cars (which we will consider as locos for the purposes of this survey). So, is there anywhere you can see 50 loco movements during a 12-hour spotting marathon?