PRESERVATION
HOW A ‘ROYAL’ EMU WAS SAVED
Howard Johnston explains his last-minute rescue of a Class 365 from the scrapyard, meaning the East Kent Railway is now home to one of The Queen’s favourite trains.
HER Majesty The Queen sometimes commented how comfortable the First Class seats were in Class 365 ‘Networker Express’EMUs when she and the royal family travelled in them between King’s Cross and King’s Lynn en route to her winter home at nearby Sandringham.
Now that the ‘365s’ have been withdrawn, is it just a coincidence that The Queen’s most recent journey to Norfolk was by helicopter rather than by rail? The robust ‘ironing board’ seats in the replacement Class 387s can hardly be appealing for a 95-year-old!
The working life of the 41-strong Class 365 fleet has been surprisingly short, not least for the one scrapped after the tragic accident at Potters Bar in May 2002 (No. 365526). Despite being the final development of British Rail’s ‘Networker’ family, and the last to be completed at York Works before its closure in 1996, they have simply become unwanted old technology.
Four years of strenuous effort by their owner Eversholt Rail to find fresh employment – even overseas – proved fruitless, and the cost of keeping them in open store at Crewe and Doncaster could no longer be justified. So, last autumn, the reluctant decision was taken to send them for scrap, and at the time of writing three-quarters of the fleet has already been broken up by Sims Metals at Newport and Booths of Rotherham.
It should have been the end of the line for No. 365540 within hours of its arrival at Sims Metals on January 20 (like the dismembered HST power car on its right), but the leading driving car will be leaving in a few hours for a new home at the East Kent Railway.
HOWARD JOHNSTON