Class 201 provides a sense of the ‘60s’

The first leg of UK Railtours’ 0745 Tonbridge-Portsmouth Harbour charter on September 3 re-created a scene which would have been repeated thousands of times in the 1960s, with preserved Class 201 ‘Hastings Unit’ 1001 heading towards the capital in the morning mist along the Hastings-London main line (the route for which the bespoke units were built). The charter approaches Petts Wood, having just gained the quadruple-track section at Orpington, electrified in 1925. Sixty-one years later, electrification of the entire Hastings line rendered diesel traction redundant.