Retro Railtour Oldham Looper & Cumbrian Coaster

[yorkie]

Great day out yesterday!

Several of the stewards (you know who you are!) went well beyond the call of duty and worked extremely hard, they must have been knackered by the time they got home!

Several people on this forum were on the tour, I couldn't attempt to list them all. Thanks to all of you who did attend, and please do reply below with any comments.

The behaviour of almost everyone on board was excellent. The stock was in good condition. The weather was quite reasonable with some sunshine along the coast so some people should have some good photos - I look forward to seeing them!

Well done to James and everyone else involved!

 

[paul1609]

Yeah it was a good day out. Sadly those who stayed on till Carlisle missed the most exciting performance of the day. We alighted at Ravenglas got the steam train to Dalegarth and had a proper lunch in a proper pub (no witherspoons here).
We also had time to visit the working watermill at Boot a second pub and walk about a mile further up Eskdale.

The younger member of the party had wanted to depart on the last connection to the railtour the 3.20 as it was hauled by a converted lawnmower diesel thing. We arrived back at Dalegarth station just after 3.00 but as time wore on there was no sign of the train.

At around 3.30 we could hear the progress of a most un-diesel loco up the dale and River Ire loomed in to view with an absolutely packed train. There was a very fast run round and the RER were obviously begining to twitch at this point, recomending over the pa that passengers on the retro rail tour travel in the front coach to make a quick connection at Ravenglas. It appeared that the diesel had failed.

Off we set and it was obvious that this was a rather different driving technique to that experienced coming up the dale, I think it normally described as "going for it". Unfortunately this was a busy bank holiday and several of the request stops were called but this in itself was quite impressive our long train hitting the end of the platforms at some speed and braking smoothly to stop in the right place. Any way this performance continued down the dale we had regained correct time by the bottom passing loop but the down train was a few minutes late. Eventual arrival at Ravenglas was only 3 mins late so we had 20 minutes until the railtour was due to arrive

 

[Max]

Agreed, it was a fantastic day. Congratulations to James on the superb organization, everything came off a treat, and I'll add my thanks to the stewards who, as Yorkie said, really worked their socks off to make sure everything went according to plan. I've attached some photos from the day in this post - enjoy!