Crystal Maze, Northern Lease GC 180 + GWR 43002 - What A Combination!

I'm Harry, providing today's News Roundup - Prescheduled with updates from a variety of TOCs and FOCs. Without waiting any longer....


Firstly to announce, the scheduled GBRf tour on 31st July 2016 (One Month Away Now) to raise money for charity. Named the Crystal Maze II (I'm not on about Indianna Jones), hauled by a GBRf 66 throughout, this service departs Birmingham at lunchtime running to Eastleigh, calling at Cheltenham Spa and Didcot Parkway only (non-stop via Swindon and Basingstoke). 


North: From 11th July, Northern Rail will lease a GC Class 180 for their additional 07:44 Leeds-Bradford service (until their own leased units are built). Talking of NR, they've upgraded Harrogate Station as part of a £1.2 million investment. A summary of the overhahl is stated in their poster here, sourced and courtesy of Northern.

At the beginning of May was the Bristol St Phillip's Marsh Open Day, where thousands descended into the Depot to see a variety of Diesels - including celebrating the 40th Birthday of the HST.

The predominant news was of course 43002, which somehow ended up back in one of its original HST liveries! :O Well the locomotive has been up and down the Cornish Riviera corridor, to/from Paddington numerous times, so of course we had to showcase some of the best shots!

Two great images here, the shot to the right taken by John whilst the trains out in passenger service during the day, whilst the latter image shows 43002 at Carmarthen, next to a 150, after working a service from London Paddington - captured by Mark Thomas (his excellent photo selection is here).

The last image for the post shows the photogenic 43002, this time from Fraser! Great shot!

We couldn't miss a post on all of this! It's like taking a step back into the dark ages.... Woops - I didn't mean that far back!

Thanks to John, Fraser and Mark, for the photo permission - we love seeing shots like this. They of course remain copyrighted to their owner.

So to summarise today's short post, we delved into the schedule for the GBRf Crystal Maze Tour and took a look at 43002 in Heritage livery.

Incidentally, that concludes todays post. In regards to the photos used, I'd like to thank those who've let us 'borrow' them.  And I wish all our readers a very good evening, I am grateful and appreciate all of the ongoing support in running this blog! ^H
Regards:

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