The 'Great Britain IX' The pinnacle of British steam railtours makes it annual return for the ninth time, though if rumours are true, this could be the last one. The first two days were to be double headed by 46100 'Royal Scot' & 'Black Five' 44871. Unfortunately 44871 was declared failed on the eve of the tour, though we would see the class 5 make a return for day three, due to fantastic work by Ian Riley's team. With the temporary failure of 44871, this would mean 46100 would have to front the tour for the first two days.
The scheduled route for the first two days which would include the notorious Devon & Cornwall Hills, a route where taking chances is not recommended. This meant that a diesel locomotive would need to be attached at the rear to provide assistance if needed.
The main debate amongst linesiders was whether the crew would allow the class 7 'Royal Scot' to take all 10 coaches over the gruelling gradients, with the diesel just taking it's weight ? Many were sceptical, including myself ! Even in steam days, 10 coaches for a class 7 was against the rules over the Devon Banks ! The title of the video may give the answer to the question away, but in our opinion and many others '46100' did reign supreme over Dainton ! Reports from the train did confirm that some assistance was given on the other challenging parts of the route. So in the end we felt lucky to have chosen Dainton, for our main shots over the other tricky sections.
For this year's tour we planned 15 locations, but for our own personal reasons only 11 locations were used. In this video there features 13 scenes which cover the first three days of this mammoth excursion. Locations are listed below and in video.
(Day 1) 46100 - Whiteball, Whiteball Summit, Dainton Bank, Dainton Tunnel
(Day 2) 46100 - Bodmin Parkway, Penkestle downs (Glynn Valley) Combe Fishacre x3 (Dainton Bank) Red Ball, Flax Bourton
(Day 3) 44871 - Abergavenny & Bromfield
Apologies for the few ruffles of wind on day 2 and the high sensitive sound at 8.32 ! I had lost my Auxiliary cable for my microphone boom and had to use the internal camcorder microphone.
A massive thanks to Railway Touring Company & West Coast Railways for the huge effort of the operation and execution of this gargantuan steam tour over the United Kingdom.
I hope you enjoy the coverage.