12th April 2012 - Cumbrian Mountain Express12th April 2012
A day trip to Carlisle with class 86 electric loco 86259 and 46115 “Scots Guardsman” on a day off from work and picking up at a station near us, can’t let that one go so a booking was duly made with the Railway Touring Company. Come the day, we decided to drive to Milton Keynes as there are some nasty gaps in the local service in the evening and we didn’t want to be arriving at the wrong time and be landed with a half hour or worse wait. We arrived on the platform to see the departure boards showing our train as “delayed”, not good news as it meant that it may not have departed from London Euston yet and a bit of a downer for those travelling from there as the actual booked departure time was quite a bit earlier than the projected one due to having to fit in with Mr Branson’s nice shiny Pendolinos. Nothing else to do but visit the outlet on the platform and partake of a cup of tea, by which time the platform board was showing the train to be 30 minutes late. It eventually departed some 40 minutes late and (as correctly guessed by ourselves) re-platformed on the Down Slow, we were slightly surprised when the train was routed back out to the Down Fast at Hanslope Junction. If it had carried on via Northampton not only would it have been a further downer for those that had been sent to Rugby to alight (the train was originally advertised as picking up at Northampton but was unable to be pathed that way) we would also have lost a further 15 minutes or so. In the end, some good running saw us arrive in the loop at Carnforth only some 15 minutes late where the electric loco was swapped for 34067 “Tangmere” – it’s first ever trip up Shap so we are told. Those of you who have been paying attention will be asking what happened to 46115? Well, we are not really sure beyond an announcement that it was unavailable about a week before the tour and would be replaced by 34067, not exactly a favourite loco of ours but it has grown on us a little after a couple of previous trips. Given the tendency for Bulleid Pacifics to slip, we did wonder about it getting up Shap with 12 coaches especially with a “cold” start from Carnforth but it did manage it, even if the speed at the top was reported to be 18mph. There was a slight heart in mouth moment when it slipped near the summit but the driver did well to recover from that without too much loss of momentum, it was also fortunate that the weather conditions were quite good – if it had been raining……….. Carlisle was reached only 8 minutes late, a creditable performance which still gave us most of the 1 hour and 54 minutes booked here. To us, there was little point in attempting to go off and do something in that time as we had been doing the full dining option so we stayed on the station to try and get a few photos, being somewhat hampered by the railtour stock being parked in the “main” platform. Departure was on-time and a good run was had to Appleby where there was the chance to get some photos as the loco took water and those who could not be bothered to alight or wanted to get a couple of hundred yards of rare track in the form of the Up Through Siding could stay on the train. The rest of the steam hauled section was relatively unremarkable and we changed back to 86259 for the homeward run at the rather unusual location of Farington Junction, the overhead wires going just far enough towards Lostock Hall Junction to enable an electric loco to take over a train. A routine run back to Milton Keynes saw us arriving a few minutes early capping a pleasant and interesting day out; “Tangmere” did well and, dare we say, might even have grown on us a little more after our fourth trip behind it.
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Railway Touring Company
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