The Winter Settler 08/01/13

[Darren R]

What went wrong with The Winter Settler railtour this morning - does anyone know? According to Realtime Trains it started from Bristol Parkway rather than Temple Meads 102 minutes late due to the late arrival of the inbound ECS. http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/U51835/2013/02/09/advanced Again according to Realtime Trains the ECS was delayed at Crewe for two and a half hours: http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/U51840/2013/02/09/advanced There is no info about it on Pathfinder's website though.

I wasn't actually booked to travel on it, but since it didn't go past the kitchen window as expected I was just curious! Presumably there were rather alot of very bleary eyed and rather disgruntled ticket holders at Temple Meads at 0547 this morning!

 

[MidnightFlyer]

From what I've read 37611 failed at in the small hours of this morning at Crewe (I gather it was mean to work ECS to Bristol Temple Meads) and an extra 37 had to be found somewhere. It missed out Manchester in the end and ran via Warrington BQ and Leyland to Blackburn.

 

[Phil6219]

Presumably there were rather alot of very bleary eyed and rather disgruntled ticket holders at Temple Meads at 0547 this morning!

Tell me about it, my patience would have been more than tested had I had to make the trek over to [stn]BRI[/stn] for that time...

I think in the end the tour made it into Carlisle some 4 or so minutes late, perhaps helped by padding in the time table but the main part comes down to running straight up the WCML from Stafford up to Farringdon, so skipping out Crewe BH, Stockport, Manchester & Bolton. When it got to Blackburn it was 20 down so it was a considerable improvement on 114 down.

It was a bit of a farce for the spotters though, my plans were to go to Kearsley and get a similar shot to my steam shot a few weeks ago but given only 1tph actually stops there we needed a definite answer... In the end we got confirmation as to which way it was coming and set up at Wigan (for a change ) I do wonder how many were waiting along the original route and either didn't get the latest info or couldn't relocate...

Either way it was a good show from the 37s as always and well worth the wait

Phil

 

[dzug2]

The ticket holders at Bristol were taken out to Parkway on a service train - I think the either the 0615 XC Glasgow or the 0700 Manchester - I was told but can't remember which

 

[Darren R]

Thanks for the info. I presumed it had been sent straight up the WCML to make up some of the lost time - all things considered arriving at Carlisle only 5 late was pretty good going!