HOW A LOOP TURNS ‘STEAM + DIESEL’ INTO ‘DIESEL ONLY’

Here’s a poser for you. Why, in a period of heightened fire risk, would the morning ‘Jacobite’ run steam plus diesel, but the afternoon train from Fort William to Mallaig be diesel-only? The answer to this apparent conundrum is actually a fairly simple one. It’s all about the length of a loop. Two minutes after the second train rolls into Glenfinnan (at 3.17pm) on its outward leg, the returning morning trip reaches the former North British station from Mallaig. Since the two trains cross here, the later one is reliant on squeezing into Glenfinnan’s loop. For the same reason, the afternoon ‘Jacobite’ is limited to six coaches, even in non-fire risk times – the morning train loads to seven.

This all became pertinent in July when concern about fire reached even this west coast outpost – although to be fair things were pretty soon back to normal, with ‘K1’

No. 62005 and Ian Riley’s ‘Black Fives’ once again doing their stuff unassisted.

Further south, as of August 1, things were still roughly as they had been the last time I penned these words: other than on parts of Network Rail’s LNW Zone – think West Coast Main Line – no complete steam ban was in place. However, with ‘diesel assistance’ and steam relegated to something like ‘show pony’ status, there’s still been little happening to get the red-blooded performance fan revved up. Indeed, other than the West Highland and the ‘flat as a pancake’ line to Scarborough (where diesels have been allowed to stay on the back of the train), pretty much everything has been run as a steam plus diesel double-header, with the ‘modern traction’ doing most of the work.

When will it finish? Who knows? After a dousing and a drop in temperatures around the end of July, as I write it looks like the mercury will once again head higher, and repetitively unending blue skies herald little chance of rain…