Crewe Railway DRS Open Day 2022 & Heritage Centre.

You cannot beat a trip to Crewe, especially when attending an openday!

The one thing you don’t necessarily associate with a diesel locomotive depot is porridge oats. But the air around Direct Rail Services’ Gresty Bridge site in Crewe is thick with the smell of the stuff - the Mornflake factory is on the other side of the tracks.

Gresty Bridge opened as a DRS depot in March 2007. A former wagon works, it became a maintenance shed for tampers under British Rail. It is not, contrary to popular belief, a former GWR shed. The depot is very much a part of the community, not least because of Crewe’s proud railway heritage, with regular open days held. That’s in no small part due to the working relationship of the people who are based there.

“The key business is the nuclear stuff,” it is one of four bespoke businesses in DRS, along with National Delivery Service work for Network Rail, intermodal work and charters. DRS has its own Mk 2 coaching stock, but this is currently being refurbished for use on Sellafield workers’ trains. A two-year contract with nearby Riviera Trains provides coaching stock for charters, while the ‘Belle’ is owned by VSOE. “ The operator provides trains for about 140 charters a year (100 of those for the ‘Belle’), except in January, which is a quiet time for the charter business. It also plans the routes, including liaising with major stations (a list displayed on the wall has station contacts for all the UK’s major stations) to obtain the necessary platforms and station staff when a charter arrives. Day-to-day organisation of charters means that NR needs eight weeks’ notice to allocate paths.

As well as Gresty Bridge, DRS also has depots at Sellafield, Carlisle, York, Inverness, Daventry and Stowmarket. “Carlisle men go as far north as Aberdeen, Fort William and Mallaig, while drivers from Crewe go down as far as Plymouth, Fishguard and Nottingham, The company has made no secret of its desire to become more involved in passenger trains. But just how quickly can a passenger train be organised?

Although DRS has recently been busy scrapping stored locomotives of a 1960s vintage, DRS maintains that “the ‘68s’ won’t replace anything - they’re a mixed traffic locomotive”. The drivers’ manuals for the ‘68s’ are currently being written in Carlisle there is a “rumour” that one will be painted in Northern Belle colours.

The depot also houses several ‘57s’ (Crewe has all the engineering and maintenance plans for the ‘57/3s’), some of which are newly acquired. Gresty could almost pass for a smaller BR depot of the 1970s or 1980s.

So what kind of maintenance is undertaken at Crewe? A fitter explains that nothing that involves heavy lifting is done at Crewe - that’s the job of Carlisle Kingmoor. Instead, Crewe carries out ‘D’ exams (anything from compression to engine work), as well as ‘A’ and ‘B’ exams.