Hastings DEMU ‘1001’ arms the ‘The Mick Tester Memorial’ | 18/01/25

On the 18th of January 2025 the Hastings Diesel Ltd would honour the loss of their fellow colleague Mick Tester with an excursion which ran from Hastings in Sussex to Eastleigh in Hampshire. The Hastings Diesel Ltd is based at St Leonards Marina Depot which meant there had to be an empty coaching stock manoeuvre to Hastings to begin the tour, we capture this ECS at St Leonards Warrior Square where we capture the two units emerging and disappearing from two tunnels. As passengers were boarding at Hastings, this gave an opportunity to capture the tour working out of Etchingham upon steep gradients where the unit would work towards Reigate where we capture her next before promptly returning home to Tunbridge Wells to capture the return leg. Hastings Diesel Ltd, who own and operate 1001, have made no secret of the fact that number ‘1001’ is used as an umbrella term for their unit, since it frequently features vehicles from other units in its composition. HDL own a variety of Hastings vehicles from both Class 201 and Class 202 units, with the make-up of ‘1001’ dependant on which vehicles are serviceable at any given time. The configuration for this tour would be S60116 “Mountfield” + S60000 “Hastings” + S60118 “Tunbridge Wells” + S60528 + 69337 + 70262 + S60529 + S60199. 69337 and 70262 are from other southern region units, due to the unavailability of genuine 'Hastings' equivalents. S60000 “Hastings” is a genuine 1001 power car, while the other three power cars all come from Class 202 units; S60116 "Mountfield" being a survivor of 1012, while S60119 and S60118 "Tunbridge Wells" are both from 1013. The final two coaches, S60528 and S60529, are also from unit 1013. It must be said I had some audio issues, most notably at Etchingham and to some extent Reigate, while making this video meaning the Etchingham shot had to be denoised massively so I do apologise for these issues. Two thank yous must be given to ​⁠‪@TheSouthernerYTChannel‬ for allowing me to use his expertly written paragraph of 1001 and to my good friend Nathan Wright who grabbed a couple pictures of the unit at TW station for me to use as b-roll. Timestamps: 0:00 St Leonards Warrior Square 1:26 Etchingham 2:42 Reigate 3:45 Tunbridge Wells