Sunday, 15 May 2016

North Yorkshire Moors Scottish Branch Line weekend

A short video taken at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. The locomotives featured are:


  • Deltic D9022 Royal Scots Grey ( appearing as D9007 Pinza)
  • LMS Black 5 no 45049




Monday, 2 May 2016

Great Briton IX Rattles Through Woodlesford

LMS Jubilee Class 45690 Leander heads The Great Britain IX through Woodlesford on the final day of the tour.


Saturday, 30 April 2016

Embsay and Bolton Abbey Railway Branchline Weekend

A visit to the Branchline Weekend at the Embsay and Bolton Abbey Heritage Railway in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

The weather was a bit mixed and it was a bit on the cold side for late April. On a positive note, the trains all ran to time and all the tearooms had some cosy log fires burning.

Locomotives featured are:

  • GWR Class 5600 no 5643
  • No 35
  • Beatrice


Friday, 11 March 2016

East Lancashire Railway Spring Gala 2016

Locomotives featured:
  • BR Standard Class 4 no 80080
  • LMS Black 5 no 44871
  • LMS Hughes Crab no 13065
  • SR West Country Class 34092 City of Wells

Saturday, 27 February 2016

The Special One

On Thursday, we set out to capture some images of the world famous steam locomotive, The Flying Scotsman. I suspected there might be a few more enthusiasts turn up than for your average steam locomotives. In no way did I anticipate the large number of people who would be there.
It's usually busy at Colton Junction which is another one of our reasonably local spots and I thought we would be better off heading to somewhere else where it might be a little bit quieter. It turned out that everywhere along the East Coast Main Line was crowded with enthusiasts trying to catch a glimpse of the world famous locomotive.

We've visited Moor Lane several times over the last few years. Usually, there will be maybe two or three other cars parked up, but on Thursday, there were no parking spaces left by the time Flying Scotsman was due to arrive.


This was the scene last December when 46233 Duchess of Sutherland headed by Moor Lane with a steam special.

However, things hadn't gone according to plan for The Inaugural Run and the train was delayed because of people trespassing on the railway in an effort to get the best photo. So the train had a helicopter checking that the line ahead was clear.

The train was stopped north of Doncaster before it reached our spot at Moor Road. We were buzzed a couple of times by helicopters and each time we thought this signalled the train's arrival only to be disappointed. Eventually, smoke was sighted in the distance at last heralding the train's arrival.

At leas,t we'd managed a decent view of the newly restored locomotive the cost of which is estimated at £4.2 million. She's now on display at the National Railway museum in York. Then she will be touring the country on both mainline trips and visits to Heritage Railways.








Thursday, 25 February 2016

60163 Flying Scotsman - The Inaugural Run

The Inaugural run from London Kings Cross to York on 25 February 2016.



Wednesday, 17 February 2016

A Mixed Weekend

It should have been a good weekend for photographing and getting some video of steam train specials. It didn't quite turn out that way due to the rather wayward timing of Sunday's Tin Bath Special. 

Saturday's trip out was to see The Valentine White Rose running from London Kings Cross to York.
I'd got the timing from Real Time Trains just about spot on for our 45 minute trip out to Colton Junction near York. There were a good number of enthusiasts already in their chosen spots as we arrived. I think 34067 Tangmere was third choice locomotive for this tour behind 70000 Britannia and 60009 Union of South Africa. Actually it's a bit of a treat to see an Ex Southern Region locomotive working in this part of the country. 
 Tangmere sped by running a few minutes early but with a rather disappointing amount of smoke.

Sunday's plan was to capture The Tin Bath in Wakefield our local station. I've blogged before about the special charter steam train called the Tin Bath named after the Last of the Summer Wine television programme. On Sunday it was due to travel through Wakefield. This was too good an opportunity to miss so my plan was to pop down to the station to grab a quick video clip as it passed through. I knew from the Internet the train was running almost an hour late and so tried to judge our arrival time accordingly. Then at the last minute I decided more of an action packed video would be better rather than the train passing slowly through the station and decided on a spot out towards Horbury Junction. The trouble was I got the timing all wrong and we arrived just as smoke billowed over the bridge parapets. So as you've probably guessed there are no photographs of The Tin Bath.

To finish off this post the video of Tangmere heading The Valentine White Rose is included below.