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It was off to Aylesbury for a special day in mid-May: the last Modernisation Plan DMU in regular service on the national network. 19 May 2017 was the last weekday of the winter timetable, and indeed it still felt like winter on the chilly platform as we gathered in the company of our host, Chiltern Railways MD Dave Penney and his new Ops Director Gavin Panter. The motive power was Chiltern’s last two ‘bubble cars’ – the brace of Class 121s the company has kept till now for the shuttle on the single-track line on the edge of the Vale of Aylesbury that potters down to Princes Risborough in the lee of the Chiltern scarp.
To misquote Kilgore, I love the smell of diesel in the morning: there’s certainly no mistaking it with Nos 121020 and 121034, on the platform edge and leaking into the saloon. On top of that diesel smell, to bring on the nostalgia there are the views through the driver’s window, the sigh of the vacuum brakes, the crunch of the gears… We got more than enough of the latter as a faulty connection between the pair of old ladies saw the brakes leaking on and the train grinding to an unscheduled halt shortly after we hit the single track out of Aylesbury. Much revving and crunching en…
