December update (3)

Mainline steam again... Bath & Bristol Christmas Express, 7th December 

                                                            44871 at Bristol Temple Meads.

I received an early Christmas surprise a few weeks ago. My wife presented me with a booking for the Railway Touring Company’s steam hauled Bath & Bristol Christmas Express scheduled for 7^th December and hauled by ‘new build’ Peppercorn Pacific ‘Tornado’. A pick up and set down at Basingstoke meant that it was  easily doable, with no need for the early starts and late finishes that such trips can often entail.

Having travelled on mainline steam trips on and off for around forty odd years I can vouch for the fact that these things rarely go completely as planned. This one was no different with first the replacement of ‘Tornado’ with Black Five 44871 (Tornado having been withdrawn from service early for an overhaul) and then the change of the outbound pick up from Basingstoke to the water stop at Winchfield.

Much as a trip behind Tornado would have bene nice, I really didn’t mind the opportunity to get a decent run behind the Black Five. 44871 is not exactly a stranger when it comes to mainline trips, having previously travelled behind it on the West Highland line ‘Jacobite’ service in 2011 and on a railtour to Penzance in 2010 when it double headed with 70013 Oliver Cromwell. It certainly looked the part on a rake of West Coast Railway's maroon Mk1s and sounded great.

                                                 Ready for departure from Bristol TM in the early evening.

Britain was battered by Storm Barra on 7^th December and a tree down on the track near Warminster resulted in service disruptions with trains being held at Salisbury. We were held for some time at Laverstock Junction before crawling into the booked water stop in the city. We were held at platform four for some time, eventually getting away an hour behind schedule. 44871 put in a good performance for the run to Bath but of course there was no way to recover that sort of time and arrival at Bristol was still an hour adrift. Despite concerns about there being insufficient time to service the locomotive we were no more than a minute or two late leaving Bristol in the evening for the return leg and a splendid run was had back to Basingstoke arriving pretty much on time.

                        44871 departs Basingstoke on the run back to London Victoria in the evning.

It was wonderful to be back on the mainline behind steam traction again.