Description

Full description from the producer:

Sunrise Sunset UK spends a full day at a busy and popular location, recording a typical day of passenger and freight trains.

On the West Coast Mainline, 133 miles north of London Euston and 267 miles south of Glasgow Central is Stafford. On a section of four-track running from Crewe, the line splits at Stafford South Junction, with the mainline continuing south to Tamworth, with a branch to Penkridge, Wolverhampton and Birmingham. All lines are electrified.

Stafford is a key artery for WCML freight, with trains from Scotland, Liverpool and Manchester merging south of Crewe, all passing Stafford station, then continuing south or heading for the numerous terminals in the Midlands.

With an eight-track layout through the station, during a typical hour, 20-passenger trains call or pass though, with up to four freight trains. Our cameras filmed a typical day from 6th June 2023.

Passenger services are operated by Avanti, Cross Country and London and North Western Railway using Class 390 Pendolinos, Class 220 and 221 Voyagers and Class 350 EMUs. For freight, all five major companies have flows through here. It’s mostly containers using 66s, 70s, 88s and 90s, with stone trains, car trains and engineers trains.

The first part of the day is filmed from the huge footbridge south of the station, with the second part on the station itself. This turned out to be fantastic day and as well as what was expected, some rare moves were also recorded: A brand new Class 69, 47712, Class 70 run-round, Class 92s on sleepers, quadruple-header Class 90s, a new Class 197 DMU on delivery and Class 730s on test.

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