A Winter Visit to the Great Central Railway

On a typically cold January morning we decided to head off and spend the afternoon at the Great Central Railway winter steam gala. As we arrived I was very surprised by the numbers of enthusiasts who had decided to visit as well as us. The allotted field for parking was very wet and some areas were too wet for parking on.

As usual I expected there would be plenty of action with the railway making full use of the fact that it has up and down lines so trains come and go all the time. One of the special guest locomotives was 34053 Sir Keith Park. As we wandered towards the railway Sir Keith Park was on its way with a demonstration goods train. We hardly had time to get our cameras set up ready to capture the moment. 

Of course despite a couple of guest locomotives the Great Central Railway’s home fleet was out in full force with 777 Sir Lamiel soon arriving at Quorn and Woodhouse station.

Newly restored home fleet Locomotive 6990 Witherslack Hall was also in steam and captured getting away from Quorn & Woodhouse with a Leicester bound passenger train. We spent the afternoon wandering around the station premises photographing and videoing as many passing locomotives as we could. This was in between visits to the cafe for some warming cups of coffee.

The highlight of the afternoon was 34053 Sir Keith Park working the demonstration mail train at top speed. It’s always a good spectacle to watch the mail train running through Quorn & Woodhouse. The mail train is allowed to run much faster than the other passenger and freight trains and whilst not full out express speed it looks pretty fast compared with all the slow trains which stop at the station.

Here's a video of the express mail drop run.

A link to my HD quality YouTube video is here

By the time we’d had a coffee it was starting to get a little late in the afternoon and as it had become rather dull so, as the light was starting to fade, we decided to head off home. As we were leaving we just managed to catch 34053 Sir Keith Park returning with the mail train to Loughborough.

A video of the whole afternoon is included below.

A link to my HD quality YouTube video is here