Class 20s to Central Wales and, er, Skegness again!
Parkway, Nuneaton, Leicester and East Midlands Parkway.
The ‘Heart of Wales Explorer’ is planned for August 14, and this will start and set down only at Tyseley. The route will be via Worcester, Chepstow and Cardiff. Once it reaches Swansea the train will branch off at Llandeilo Junction and Morlais Junction to join the Heart of Wales Line. Following an afternoon break at Llandrindod Wells, the train will return northwards via Craven Arms, avoid Shrewsbury via Abbey Foregate Curve and continue via Wolverhampton, Bescot, Birmingham New Street and back to Tyseley. This will be the third time Class 20s will traverse the Central Wales line on a charter, as 20021/113 did on July 12, 1987 and 20303/304 did on October 11, 2014.
For steam fans, VT’s ‘Shakespeare Express’ season is due to start on July 18 and run for nine consecutive summer Sundays until September 12. The trains, which offer Sunday lunch and afternoon tea options, will start at Birmingham Snow Hill and call at Moor Street, Tyseley. On the outward journey it will visit Stratfordupon-Avon, and Henley-in-Arden. The return journey will be via Solihull, and then non-stop to Tyseley. 5043 Earl of Mount Edgcumbe should make its return debut following overhaul on some of these trips. The days the trains should run are July 18/25, August 1/8/15/22/29 and September 5/12.
A series of other day excursions are also planned by VT, although some of the trains scheduled for early on in the season may have to been postponed or cancelled due to on-going coronavirus restrictions. Please check before booking or travelling
to see them. The series is planned to start with the ‘Railway Roundabout’ on March 20 hauled by 7029 Clun Castle. This train is named after the famous children’s TV programme presented by Patrick Whitehouse (who saved Clun Castle). The train will leave Tyseley for a circular run from Birmingham to Leicester and back. This will be subject to the current lockdown being lifted, of course.
April 10 is set aside for the ‘Red Dragon’ to Cardiff running via Worcester and Chepstow and again hauled by 7029. The ‘Welsh Marches Express’ will run on April 24 with 7029, on June 12 with Jubilee 5596 Bahamas and on July 3 behind 46233 Duchess of Sutherland. These trips will run from Tyseley to South Wales, but just before Newport the trains will take the Maindee curve to head north along the Welsh Marches route towards Shrewsbury. They will avoid the station and carry on via Wolverhampton back to Tyseley.
The ‘North Wales Coast Express’ on May 1 will use 7029 again as far as Chester, where the train will reverse and continues to Llandudno behind 47773 The Queen Mother. This will allows 7029 to work back to the West Midlands. The highlight for visitors will be the Llandudno Victorian Extravaganza & Transport Festival.
The ‘SLS Special’ on May 15 will celebrate the 70 years of the Stephenson Locomotive Society and will use 7029 for a trip from Tyseley to Swindon to visit the Steam Museum. The return will be via Oxford and Leamington. The following Saturday, May 22, has been set aside for the ‘White Rose’, which will start at Tyseley behind 47773 as far as York. After an extended break, the return will be behind steam, with 45596 in charge.
A first-ever trip to Scarborough for 7029 is planned for June 5 with Clun Castle working throughout on the ‘Scarborough Spa Express’ from Tyseley to the North Yorkshire seaside resort. Two weeks later, on June 19, it will be the ‘Midland Bristolian’ from Derby to Bristol and back behind 46233, running out via the Great Western Main Line and returning via the fearsome 1-in-37 Lickey Incline, although the train will be banked by a diesel, presumably 47773.
The ‘Buxton Jubilee’ on July 24 will be behind 45596 and will start at Tyseley and run via Tamworth, Derby and the goodsonly line through Great Rocks Dale and Dove Holes Tunnel to Buxton. The same ex-LMS loco will be in charge of August 7’s ‘Welshman’ charter from Tyseley to Holyhead running via Crewe.
One step forward, two steps back
Go on, admit it, you thought 2021 was going to be a great year. After all, anything had to be better than the nightmare that 2020 was. There is now a COVID-19 vaccine, well several different ones, so surely we’ll all be back to some semblance of normality by Easter? Well, not quite, as due to a horrific third spike of the ghastly virus after Christmas, the inevitable ‘Lockdown 3’ understandably came in January!
Lockdown 2 was poorly observed from what I, and most others, could tell. If you had to take your kids to school then the chances are you were ‘out the house’ and so you went on to do other things.
Lockdown 3 is, I think, a little more tightly prescribed and, given the COVID-19 infection rates, it needed to be. It’s early days, and as I write it has only been in force for a few days. The way I see it, we need to lockdown and limit our travel and the government has to do absolutely everything in its power to ramp up vaccinations. I appreciate it is a logistical challenge of the like that’s never been seen before, but we have to hope that the powers that be can get a wriggle on and get as many people jabbed as possible. Because this pandemic is continuing to take its toll on people and businesses.
Last issue I wrote with a level of optimism about how many promoters were looking ahead and already planning their 2021 programmes with much semblance of what they had run in 2019 and the like. Plenty of trains, especially from the established promoters and operators such as West Coast Railways and Saphos.
While it’s impossible to predict at this stage what will run, how and when, it’s fair to say that those day excursions planned for the first four months of 2021 are unlikely to happen. Some may be re-dated but others may be cancelled. Already I hear anything planned for January and February has been binned, and the same is likely to apply for March and most probably April.
So could it be May that charters finally start to run again? Well, it’s possible, as by then – hopefully – all the most vulnerable groups will have been vaccinated. But the bigger question is, will the charter market bounce back relatively quickly? I still can’t predict that. I agree some will be champing at the bit to get out and back to normal but others will be more reserved and sceptical. Some may not be able to afford it if they have lost their jobs or businesses, or at least lost some of their income. 2020 was challenging for promoters and, even with trains hopefully restarting, 2021 is going to be just as challenging. It could be 2022 or even 2023 before things are back to ‘normal’.
GBRf charity train re-dated
Given the continued uncertainty over how this year is going to pan out, GB Railfreight’s Charity railtours arm has postponed its four-day trip from mid-April until September 2-5. Paul Taylor said: “Following recent COVID-19 developments, we have decided it would be sensible to postpone GBRf2021 from our planned April dates until later in the year. While this is disappointing for us all, we are sure everyone will support us in this action.
“On the positive side, tentative discussions with all the locomotive and rolling stock owners who we have been working with, have concluded that they can all supply us with their resources for a re-date of Thursday September 2 to Sunday September 5 and so we will be planning to run our four-day tour back in the ‘traditional’ month of September. A check on provisional engineering work plans would suggest that we can run our tour as we advertised for April, albeit there will be one or two tweaks to the routing on Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.” GBRf said it will issue an update on the tweaked route
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Cleethorpes-Edinburgh
Peterborough-Edinburgh
Stoke-Carlisle
Finsbury Park-Whitby
Milton Keynes-Fort William*
Fort William-Mallaig
Fort William-Milton Keynes*
Peterborough-Worcester
Doncaster-Portsmouth Harbour
Euston-Dumbarton
Dumbarton-Oban
Stevenage-Fort William*
Fort William-Mallaig
Dumbarton-Stonehaven
Fort William-Stevenage*
Dumbarton-Euston
Victoria-Harwich
Euston-Eastleigh
Euston-Carlisle
Mossend-Oban-Newcastle
Scarborough-Carlisle
Newcastle-Paddington
Birmingham NS-Penzance
St Pancras-Inverness*
Inverness-Kyle of Lochalsh
Inverness-St Pancras*
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Please note, many of these trains are expected to be postponed or cancelled due to the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. Please check before booking or travelling to photograph them.
in the coming months and aims to release tickets for sale on Good Friday.
However, the organising team has tentatively set aside April 17 for a oneday charity train if the COVID-19 situation allows it. Paul added: “Please don’t remove the April dates from your diaries just yet… there is still a hope that life will become ‘more normal’ after Easter. While we don’t want to guess, predict or debate what the next few months hold, we are optimistic people and we have set ourselves a little challenge. If we are able to we may insert a one-day fun charter on Saturday April 17.
“We are not saying where we might go or what with yet, as things will be down to availability of traincrew, volunteer stewards and locos at the time. We know not everyone will want to travel on charters straight away, but it would get those that do out and about again and raise that all-important cash for charity. Any plans will be announced at short notice as/when/if we know we can run a tour, so that could even be two to three weeks before we run it, but we’d rather keep the option open as we don’t know when ‘normal’ will be this year.”
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redated to 2/9/21
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over the S&C or Highland Main line? I’m all for main line heritage diesels but I cannot see how on earth we, as in the railway family, needs four main line registered 55s. And if you take that view, asking people to stump up £255k just to main line register yet another one seems a strange decision. But then, as I say, it’s up to the DPS and its supporters as to how they want to spend their money.
Ray Churchill retires after 60 years
Vintage Trains’ steam driver Ray Churchill has retired after six decades on the railway. The 79-year-old has decided to hang up his signature red scarf and grease top, curtailing his long and illustrious railway career on the main line.
Ray was born in October 1941 in Wednesbury and started work on the railways as a cleaner at Bescot in 1957. He then progressed to firing school, eventually passing out as a fireman in 1966. He became a driver in 1972 and continued to work at Bescot for BR, Trainload Freight and later EWS, and signed steam during that time for charter trains.
DBC
DB Cargo
Direct Rail Services