| The Bank Holiday Monday on the 31st of August saw us back across the other side of the Pennines again, this time to visit the Elsecar Heritage Railway, who were holding their annual diesel gala there.
Having visited this small but very friendly railway back in late May, I had been looking forward to this event very much, and it was great to see that they had put the full timetable on their website prior to the event, thus giving us advance details of all the planned runs and working locos that day, and very importantly for us photographers, which ends of the train the locos would be on for each run. After having been a bit critical of several other railways of late for treating this sort of essential information as some sort of state secret, which should only be revealed to those eventually, and having spent many spent hours rubbing and polishing their crystal balls trying to work out what time the first train would depart, and then used guesswork to decide what time they should leave home, and only when they've done all this and then paid for a programme, been given this information (it's a bit like the search for the Holy Grail in some cases!). Full marks to the folks at Elsecar for getting this spot on, obviously they use real enthusiasts to plan their events and not greedy business managers! 
Six locos were listed as being operational during the event, these included home fleet: Hunslet 6950, Drewery 72229, Yorkshire 2895, 14901, and visiting Class 31 'D5580' (31162), which is owned by the Midland Railway I believe, also, on static display, was North British No. 27097. These locos ran 'top and tail', with the locos changing ends later in the day to give us a chance to photograph and see them from a different angle. Elsecar isn't always the easiest of lines to take pictures on, mainly because virtually the entire route is lined by trees, so it isn't easy to find many places where you can stand well back to take your shots. Thankfully our previous visit proved very helpful here, as this time I knew where the Sun would be, and also had decided to make as much use of my telephoto lens as possible so that I could shoot the locos 'head on' whenever I was away from the station. All in all a very enjoyable day, and even the weather was good, with blue skies at times and plenty of sunshine, a big change from the almost Monsoon like conditions of the previous two days. Well done Elsecar, and my thanks to all of your volunteers and members, who worked very hard to keep us entertained for around 8 hours. I really appreciated all of your efforts, and look forward to returning for one of your other events in the future, and I hope that your plans to extend the line do eventually come to fruition, you certainly deserve it! |
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