…at St. Leonards Depot.
We are now taking bookings for our Weymouth Envoy railtour of Saturday 20 July 2013: please see the Railtours page for further details.
On Saturday 22 December, 1001 was chartered for the Olympia Express excursion, which ran to time or early throughout.
On Saturday 24 November, 1001 operated our Canterbury Trail railtour to Kent (including the Dungeness branch), and an illustrated news article has been published.
The DEMU Diary contains details of all workings on the main line since March 2003. See also the HDL Railtour archive.
Our train has six vehicles re-certified for main-line use, including the CEP coach and Buffet car. See the Current fleet status of CDL for further details.
The unit’s formation at the depot is:
[Ashford end]
60116 Mountfield - 60529 - 70262 - 69337 - 60501 - 60118
Tunbridge Wells [Bexhill end]
This “rolling news” article is correct to 12:00 noon on Saturday 18 May 2013
News articles which are fresh, still being updated, or still current and relevant, are linked below. Older news articles, all closed, have been placed in the News Archive.
Refreshing the interior (more photos added on 2 January 2013)
Canterbury Trail railtour, 24 November 2012 (cab-video links added on 2 January 2013)
Western Forester railtour, 15 September 2012 (more photos added on 22 October 2012)
Channel Two railtour, 7 July 2012 (video-links and one more photo added on 18 July 2012)
Mark I
rolling-stock-ban exemption renewed (article opened on 29 June
2012)
Buckeye Lower Shelf Brackets (more photos added on 29 June 2012)
Nene Machine railtour, 12 May 2012 (photos added on 26 May 2012)
Thames Tidal railtour, 31 March 2012 (article modified on 10 April 2012)
Test run diverted via Ashford (article created on 2 April 2012)
Lab 4 leaves HDL for a new home — Update to 2003 news-article (Closed article updated on 17 February 2012)
Comings & goings at St. Leonards Depot (part 2) (7 photos added on 17 February 2012)
Central Door Locking (updated on 10 June 2012)
Restoration of trailer car 60528 (updated on 5 March 2009)
Restoration of motor coach 60019 (more photos added on 19 March 2008)
On-Train Monitoring Recorders (updated on 19 March 2008)
Older news articles, all closed, have been placed in the News Archive.
Since 18 May 2003, St. Leonards Depot (leased and operated by HDL’s sister company St. Leonards Railway Engineering Limited) has been playing an increasingly active role as an operational railway depot, dealing as it does with the day-to-day fuelling, cleaning and examination of Southern’s fleet of DMUs, among other tasks. As it has thus become in effect a “main line” depot, with trains arriving and departing from/to the Network Rail network at all hours, we regret that casual visits are not possible. We thank you in advance for your understanding.
![[PHOTO: motor coach in foreground, depot yard in background: 67kB]](20070301-TheSoapRun-Armitage.jpg "Motor Coach 'Hastings' about to set off on The Soap Run
This is a link to a larger version.")
This striking study by Andy Armitage was taken on 1 March 2007 just before Motor Coach Hastings led two cars of 1001 out of the depot on “The Soap Run”, delivering supplies to South Eastern’s carriage-washer near Bopeep Junction. That little outing was also a test-run for Motor Coach Mountfield following completion of modifications in preparation for the fitting of CDL/OTMR. In the background can be seen Motor Coach Tunbridge Wells, Ex-4TC Driving Trailer 76215, and GBRF’s Electro-Diesel loco no. 73 205.