Home»All Photographs»Heritage Railways»GCR»2023»2023_01_28 Winter Steam Gala

I arrived at the A6 bridge just south of Loughborough slightly later that I should have as usual to be greeted by a friend with “Not to worry, David, everything’s been about 15 minutes down so far”. The object of my interest was to photograph the first chimney first public run of the GCR’s own Class9F that had been repainted recently in prototypically correct unlined black without the nameplates. In truth I planned my next two days to try to maximise the number of shots I could get of the 9F while it is facing north. Hopefully this north facing period will be relatively short lived as the number of good, south facing, accessible locations significantly exceeds those we have for north facing locomotives. The failure of the only rostered diesel locomotive meant widespread adjustment to the timetable but we were not treated to a replacement diesel in an inappropriate livery. The pair of diesel multiple units were quite in keeping with the theme of the gala. Whatever had occurred the previous afternoon that led to late departure of up trains from Loughborough caused severe delays throughout the day on Saturday 28th January 2023 but overall the programme was so entertaining it didn’t spoil anything.