3rd September 1977

B.R.
Day Excursion

Route :

Notes :
Another of the regularly scheduled excursions from the East Midlands to Edinburgh, this one featured one of Toton's no-boilered MGR loving Class 47's. Without steam heat a chilly trip home might be expected, not helped by the routing of this excursion via the Settle & Carlisle route, which tended to eat into the time available north of the border.

The routing to the west of the Pennines tended to produce less 'numbers in the book', and this was very true this day. Green liveried bucket 40106 was noted at Leeds, then all was quiet until Carlisle where 84002 & 40011 were sighted. No problems were encountered in surmounting Beattock with an on time arrival at Edinburgh.

The usual hurried purchase of tickets for Glasgow, followed by a search for the first westbound service found 27106 & 27209 on the next service to Glasgow. The taxi ride to Polmadie was soon over, highlights here were 06007, a forlorn 24121 and a variety of Classes 20/37/40/47. Another cross town drag in a taxi brought us to Eastfield and another sixty locomotives. Highlights included 06003, 24006, my battered notebook advises 20112 was derailed somewhere, no location was given. One more taxi ride took us back to Queen Street with 27108 & 27204 providing a good thrash back to Edinburgh. Because our excursion was routed via the West Coast, there was not time available to visit Haymarket.

Regretably Haymarket had not sent 47364 anywhere so we were stuck with an increasingly chilly ride home, though in fairness to the 47 the journey was completed in good order. Little could be observed on the ride home, perhaps it was the ever thickening ice on the windows or fingers too numb to complete the details of the day's end.

Source : David Hills
On the excursion to/from Derby.

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