Heart of Wales Sat 20th June

Has been postponed, according to Railway Herald, due to gauging issues.

 

Must be the, B1, then. RTC, have removed the tour from their website. Couldn't 45321 be drafted in ??

 

Possibly not at such short notice.

 

Sometimes I would not be surprised to hear of a tour headed by an Ivatt 2MT postponed owing to gauging issues. As the locomotives are no bigger than they ever were it has to be the usual problem of track possibly shuffling either of its own accord or during maintenance. Why cannot NR keep on top of this aspect of its asset base?

 

Do we know whether there is actually a place where the loco won't fit? It could be that 61306 has not been checked against the route yet (quite a time-consuming process, IIRC), or it could be that the measuring train hasn't been down that way for a while. It also depends on when NR were told (or realised) that the B1 was one of the locos, rather than 2 x Black-5 as per the original plan.

 

A friend who was on it was informed 2 weeks ago today, don't know why it's taken so long for UK Steam to show it as they're normally bang up to date. Surprised 45231 or the 8F couldn't substitute, but is 45305 actually available?
Just noticed - there is another tour on the same day in the opposite direction - maybe there's a looping problem?

 

It's actually also southbound ... maybe they can't accommodate two southbound tours that close to each other?

 

On RTC site for Thurs 1st October.

 

Weird Loco allocation with 45305 and 61306 Double heading !

 

Former Hull Dairycoates HLPG era stablemates.

 

Yeah i appreciate that, it's just a shame that we get such little variation of what locos come to Wales

 

And the black 5 is meant to be back running as 5305 by then as well.

 

Showing as cancelled now.

 

Indeed. Gone from the RTC site and UKSteam.info updated yesterday to "Cancelled". A shame. I hope RTC will still promote tours over this route.