and who ever thought of using a panier tank steam loco to bank the steam passenger train in stead of a diesel should of got a medal that really is a blast from the past why can't we have that every day

What an amazing sight! Who would have believed that, as recently as 2010, Network Rail could still muster a GWR Pannier Tank to act as a Banking Engine!

Very few countries still do this kind of thing.Well done Britain for keeping Steam going.

As a kid used to watch big bertha pushing the passenger trains that had stopped at Bromsgrove station she was a massive banker have great memories standing at the low end of Blackwell station, this video rekindled lots of memories thanks

That is just epic! 6201's sharp 4 cylinder beat combined with the blasting away of the pannier on the back is sheer awesome. Fantastic vid!

This view give you a real idea of how steep this gradient is. Really amazing! The power now and then that is needed to get heavy freight and passenger trains over this comes to mind. 🚂

That pannier is absolutely flat out...love it!!

Gotta love the little Panniers, despite their old they still are very useful on the mainline :)

I used to cycle to the top of the incline quite frequently from where I lived in my early teens, a distance of about 15 miles, when diesels were extremely rare, so saw lots of scenes like this. My friends and I used to sit on the grass bank about 200 yards below the summit. The best sounds would be Jubilee pulling 9 or more carriages, with a BR 2-10-0 banking at the rear.

Hi just watched some of the vids of the trains coming up the incline.What great memories it brought back,I was born in Redditch and used to cycle to Blackwell to watch the steam engines come up and down the incline,i remember big Berther the banking engine pushing the passenger and loaded goods trains up the Licky incline,it was sight to behold,this was in the fifties & sixties i was a keen train spotter in those days and travelled up to Brum newstreet then to Snowhill to get the king class locos and managed to foot plate quite afew of them if the driver or fireman were friendly great days.I think it used to cost 2d (old money) for a platform ticket so you could get close to the engines.If only video cameras had been around then what footage there could have been to look at now.Thanks for putting the footage on u-tube,you brought back many great times i spent watching these fantastic pieces of machinery doing the job they were built to do.

Awesome! I have visited the same spot only once, as I'm from Holland, but it's nice to hear all those trains working hard to get up the hill. These steamers make it even better! Very nice video!

You just have to love how beautifully LOAD Lizzie is!!!

I have taken that route on passenger transport for years. But WHAT A CAPTURE of the "tangent" or "apex" or Lickey. That was good but the banker and steam and coal outstandingness was equally as good. SUPERB heritage capture with moderns passing-by.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve watched this, and it still satisfies me as if I’ve never seen it before, every time I watch it. Simply superb. Let’s have Sunday rail travel with heritage traction only, steam and old diesel, think of the numbers of passengers it would attract on top of the normal Sunday passengers. It’s doable! Great video. Still loving it!!

The noise from the panier was incredible

Wow! Great shot! You don't see that very often! Nice to see a steam banker!

Steam, noise, power I love watching steam locos working hard Great video

You say thanks for watching, I'd like to say a big thanks so very much for posting this, great to watch the old girl getting a shove from another old one

What a great video! You can really see how steep the Lickey Incline is so thank you.

Damn! I never even knew a Pacific got to attack this grade!

i remember the lickey as being a slow bit, on the way from Swindon to Derby, mum called it Bromsgrove, i just wanted to get going, as there was home made bakewells at Grans ! now i live overseas, and maybe one day will go and see a steam special climb it again !

Great video - thanks for sharing with us !

@HughFromAlice Thanks for your comment. The Lickey Incline is just about the steepest piece of mainline in the UK and built for steam!! The down train caused a problem for people lineside lower down the line, a risk you take. She was built for the West Coast Mainline and it has some nice banks, Shap, etc. So she knows her way up a hill.

Absolutely awesome thanks for sharing. Th eonly thing missing is the smell ! You captured the location so well, the atmosphere is almost like being there.

The next new steam locomotive build, should be the unique Fowler? tank engine class 0-10-0, 4 cylinder Lickey banker, Big Bertha. Guards in the brake van at the rear of freight trains used to express real fear when Big Bertha would ease up to the rear buffers of their vans, as once onto the incline, Bertha's driver would feed out her regulator to full, & those inclined 4 cylinders would begin squeezing the brake van against the train ahead of it, almost to destruction. Guards used to say that the moaning & groaning of the frame & woodwork of the van under the titanic effort used to scare the bejesus out of them! A 9F 2-10-0 on the old Somerset & Dorset railway once recorded a drawbar pull on a bank of 2,400 DBHP on full regulator & 55% cut off at 40 mph. But that was from a 2 cylinder engine. Bertha had 4 of them.

Never mind thanks for watching!! Thanks for the video, absolutely brilliant. 5*. It really shows how steep this climb is and how easy 6201 is making of it. Granted the 9600 is full on at the back but had she got a free run at the incline would probably have got up unaided at some speed. Hats off to the banker. Regards Dave.

@scotsguardsman100 Thanks. The station at the bottom is Bromsgrove, from which you can see trains going up the incline. After the top the first station is Barnt Green, this is further away. Where I was filming is near Burcot, Red Diamond do an infrequent bus service check out their website.

Thanks for the help, I wish I was around in the early 60's to see it!!

thats a great sight seeing the steam banking

I get the impression the Crew in Princess Elizabeth seem a lot more skilled with their coal in the firebox than the pannier, evident from the lack of any dark colour out of her funnel whereas in the pannier it's all black. I remember from some of AndyDandanFisher's video of true revenue steam and they all have proper work to do with experienced crew, when under load steam ALWAYS is white like that, black smoke indicates too much coal and efficient fire cooling

Very good video, I'm tempted to say with all that black smoke it must have been the pannier that was doing all the work! It is often surprising just what these smaller locomotives can do.

It’s a shame none of the LMS/LNER Garrats didn’t survive into preservation. Seeing and hearing one or even two of those engines attacking the Lickey Incline would’ve been awe-striking.

Thank you for your message and I hope you have a wonderful right Royal day on the Railtour, great !

Absolutely amazing Keith, Cromwell and the Black 5 were good, but not a patch on this....what an action packed few minutes...Thanks for letting me enjoy it...Bob

WOW indeed, awesome video, what a wonderful sight to see the steamers really thundering n working hard up the incline! Bet the smell of the steam was just wonderful & great timing with the 66 too :D

Many thanks for your comment, gave me another chance to watch the vid - not that I need one! I was a long day, but worth every second the see the Princess in fine form. I'm glad you liked it. I travelled on the trip this year up the Lickey and filmed some on board footage, please check it out. To be on the footplate would be priceless!! Cheers.

Some really excellent video here! You tracked the train up the bank which added a great deal especially with the the Class 66 showing how close everybody was to photographic disaster!! - Thanks for sharing - that must have been superb - Video and film never does justice to the sheer loudness of the noise! - Mike

Just a couple working girls on the Lickey. Somewhere, an ol' girl with a big lamp and ten big wheels is smiling.

Bloody Hell!! 9600 seems to be slogging harder than Lizzie!! Helllfire stuff!!

excellent film there, you had the right spot staked out. that little tank wasnt half chuckin it out. well done

Dear Mr Buckeyeman, Perhaps you should watch some Swiss and German mainline steam videos, often with 30-40 bogie wagons, double headed and banked. These countries have focused on proper mainline preservation from the start, mostly with national collections being operated, including the SBB heritage collection of electric locos and a complete 1960s TEE train set. The sort of thing we just don’t do! By the way, I doubt if either of these countries would tolerate such a dip to the expansion joint on the ‘up line’. I know it’s a long lens, but surely such devises should be used to check track…. It’s not the only place that I have seen such terrible track alignment.

Love to see that banker working 👍

Hey - great vid. Boy, were you lucky with those down trains.That is some steep bank. PE - impressive hill climbing for an express passenger engine. As for 9600 - weight for weight and wheel turn for wheel turn (!!!) mightily impressive!!!

You are correct, by modified I meant fitted with cab auto-uncouplers - the information was implied if not stated. Thanks.

great work, great engines, immortal incline!

I wonder what the passengers on the turbostar thought, that suddenly roaring past. The moment at about 5;45 is good, with the sun on the smoke and the lights of the 66 appearing.

Best noise I've heard all day Great video mate, thumbs up and fav'd

@sierraxr4icosie Funny, that. Because Gordon's Hill was based off the Lickey Incline.

That little Pannier was easily the star of the show, regulator wide open in full forward gear !

Great video. Just shows how powerful the little old Pannier is! We should scrap the modern day trains and bring steam back. Better sight and sound!

Glad you liked it, it was a great trip. Many thanks for the comment.

I'd like to know if the banker was attached to the rear of the train. I've always understood that Lickey bankers simply buffered up to the rear and then fell away when the summit had been reached. If it was coupled, then the train would have had to be stopped somewhere near Barnt Green for detachment. Does anyone know?

This would be perfect for a vintage esque edit if the Turbostar and modern signal isn't there

excellent video

@TangmereTornado Thanks for your comments, you summed it up very well! Bring on the next one!!

@MG06ZT I bet it was =), the engines sure we working (the 9600 working harder since she was at the back XD) the sound of them working tho was fantastic ^^, wish I could have been there, thanks for uploading this

9400 panniers were seen often banking in late steam days. 9600, pictured here, was doing very well considering the 94s were much beefier. Surprised they could manage to get hold of a pannier for the first time in about 60 years.

Really showed the steepness of the incline

Absolutely stunning! This vid has made my day!

The word 'awesome' is much over-used these days, but THAT is AWESOME!! (What I would have given to be on the footplate of either engine... ) Thanks for posting.

David36bromsgrove is quite right that they never used to couple up, nowadays H&S means they have to couple up before leaving Bromsgrove. With the railtour the Pannier was coupled to the train and had to stay on the back for the reverse at Landor Junc. Modern trains the banker will be coupled and the train stops at the top of the incline at Blackwell, where there is a loop, and the banker will detach.

@paaltje91 Thanks very much for your comment, it would be a long trip all the way from Holland. I'm glad you liked the video.

its fantastic to steam return to the lickey incline =) its like seeing it in steam days again

@KBRAILVIDEOS It was better than Christmas!!!! Pannier, Steels, Lizzie and all them XC turbo Hoover things!!!!

I'm a choo choo train and I approve this video!!!

wooooww what sound! Great vid too. To bad about the two trains coming down the incline but that's just how it goes sadly!

@37401MadRich Thanks very much, glad you enjoyed it!

Wat een spektakel ! Kippenvel (Goose Bumps)

4:14 Engine 1: I can't do it! I can't do it! I can't do it! I can't do it! 4:42 Engine 2: You're making a fuss about nothing! You can do it! You can do it! You can do it! You can do it!

@NN2Blue If you are into steam this is as good as it gets! At 4.02 the pair blasting away, unbeatable! The vid isn't perfect, but i'm glad you like it.

With Pannier on the back to train is limited to 45mph, but from King's Norton it uses the Camp Hill goods line so it's not a major problem and as soon as it gets close to Brum it tends to get slowed with the Landor St Junc area being so busy. As for banking, i'm not correct. The current policy is that a banker can buffer up and push the train. However, when DB introduced new wagons with American knuckle couplers and no buffers it meant the loco had to couple up and 66055-59 were modified.

Carbon-footprint-tastic! Well worth it though.

Yeah, the normal bankers a 66 nowadays. Great to see them doing some real work, they've been great on the tours as well. Many thanks for watching and commenting.

thumbs up if u would rather see steam back on passenger trains👍👍👍👍👍👍

Tremendous show of power

Would the little engine just be loose coupled so that the main train can accelerate away?

Magnifique !! What a sight. Not sure how you managed to find a prime place, must have been hundreds there at that little crossing !

wow, you saw the steels!!!! horray lol fantastic 5* + fav

excellent!

Just remember this used to happen multiple times every day.

Thank you and yes your correct. Princess Elizabeth will be on a railtour to London and will on the bridge over the Thames during the servicing break. Also, i'll be on the railtour going to London :-) Trust me the real things much better than the model, thanks for the comment.

@SuperHardTrance Your guess is as good as mine, at the end of the day we're all amateur film makers and do our best. Many thanks for your comments, your description is great!

@AndreiTupolev I bet the passengers got a hell of a shock when Lizzie passed! Thanks for the comment.

very very nice

Its nice to see that pannier tanks are still useful as bankers and really their is not a modern day equivalent to replace them considering that most specials just use Class 60/66's

amazing vid. nice one

By way of further information, Wikipedia says that the Class 66 bankers can uncouple from the train while on the move.

@7P46115 You summed it up well! Just need Tyseley to do it again now, thanks for the comment.

@robmasterman Cheers Bob, I carn't believe four engines in such a short period. Roll on the next one!

lovely video well done awsome to see nick cox hull

Thanks for watching and commenting, monster engine on a monster hill!

My birthday! Can’t remember where I was...oh well, never mind. Pannier and Lizzy? Works well for me! 77XX 0-6-0PT With tractive effort around 22000lbs...not bad!

This will not do! They need to bring back LMS Big Bertha for this job

@samthegreencat47 Don't think they did, but its nice someone liked it! Thanks.

Thanks, I enjoyed every second of the video.

Wow. Great footage. Many thanks.

@WHISTLEHEADtheTRAINZ No problem, I'm glad when people like the vids. Makes it worth while.

Smashing video, so stirring, is this the engine that is paying tribute to HM THe Queen on the bridge on Jubilee Pageant day. Still remember my model and train set of this.

@letmadnessbegin Cheers, nice to see whats making the noise!

Thanks again, all is clear now.