"Beast From The East 2.0" Snowy afternoon at Sandy, ECML | 17/03/18

A very chilly and snowy visit to Sandy on the day of the arrival yet again of the 'Beast From The East' part 2? Yes another wave of snow and freezing weather has yet again struck the UK. We spent around 1 hour at Sandy on Saturday 17th March 2018. Most commonly this storm front is know as the 'Beast From The East 2.0'. 1E13 from Inverness at 1:13 is not a mistake in the typing. Likely due to the shortage of 43's they ran at 91 with a diesel towing it from Inverness to Edinburgh Waverley and then ran electric to London Kings Cross. Sandy info: Sandy Railway Station serves the town of Sandy in Bedfordshire, England. The station is 44 miles (71 km) north of London King's Cross on the East Coast Main Line. Sandy is managed and served by Great Northern. The present station has two large platforms and 4 main rail lines, a pair of "up and down" slow lines used by stopping services and a pair of "up and down" fast lines used by high speed services passing through. A fifth line extends off the "up" slow line which links into the remaining sidings and original bay platforms. There is also a sixth line off the "down" slow line that links to a siding beside Platform 1. The station platforms have been lengthened at their southern ends so that they can cope with 12-car trains, which have recently started serving the station to increase capacity and in preparation for new Class 700 trains following the completion of the Thameslink Programme. History: The first section of the Great Northern Railway (GNR) - that from Louth to a junction with the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway at Grimsby - opened on 1 March 1848, but the southern section of the main line, between Maiden Lane and Peterborough, was not opened until August 1850. Sandy was one of the original stations, opening with the line on 7 August 1850. The Sandy and Potton Railway was opened for goods traffic on 23 June 1857, and to passengers on 9 November 1857. It was later purchased by the Bedford and Cambridge Railway (B&CR), which closed the line in January 1862 for reconstruction. The line reopened on 7 July 1862, including a new station at Sandy separate from, but adjacent to, the GNR station. The B&CR was absorbed by the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) in 1865. The eastern section of the Bedford-Cambridge route (sometimes known as the Varsity Line) closed on 1 January 1968. The two stations were physically adjacent, and shared an island platform. In 1917 the LNWR station was placed under the management of the GNR, and then shared the booking facilities. After the closure of the Varsity Line, the station was considerably rebuilt in the early 1970s to give a 4-track layout throughout, and platforms on the slow lines only, thus removing a 2-track bottleneck on the East Coast Main Line. Sandy railway station was the site of the English unjust enrichment case Great Northern Railway Co. v Swaffield (1874) LR 9 Exch 132, in which the defendant sent a horse to this railway station, to be collected. His employee arrived the next day, but the station master demanded that he pay livery stable costs for the night; the employee refused to pay, and did not collect the horse. The defendant arrived later, and demanded payment to compensate him for duress of goods (after the station master offered to pay livery stable costs out of pocket); after the station master refused to pay such compensation, the defendant left the horse in the possession of the station for four months during litigation. The Court of the Exchequer held the defendant liable for four months' stable costs, as the plaintiff in the case 'had not choice, unless they would leave the horse at the station or in the high road to his own danger and the danger of other people' (per Kelly CB). In this way the court recognised a limited exception to the rule that no claim for salvage be recognised by the courts outside the context of salvage in tidal waters. Facilities: Sandy station has a small café inside the booking office on Platform 2. There is a large sheltered area with seating on Platform 1, and a smaller one on Platform 2. Both platforms have step-free access via the external road bridge. However the slope to the bridge is relatively steep on both sides of the railway and the footpath on the bridge is quite narrow. In the later half of 2016, modern ticket barriers where installed at the entrance to both platforms along with a covered area to protect them from wind and rain damage. When in use, there are staff on hand if any issues arise. The station has two modern touch screen ticket machines located in front of the booking office, and there are cycle storage facilities to the south of it Services: The station is served by a half-hourly service southbound to London King's Cross and northbound to Peterborough (with extra weekday peak trains), operated by Great Northern. There is an hourly service in each direction on Sundays.