Northern Belle: 19/9, 3/10 & 17/10/20 + 16 & 17/12/20

I put a bit more sun on this one John lol
Northern Belle by Henry Elliott, on Flickr

 

Now showing as cancelled on Railway Herald - have you had an e mail from the Northern Belle people to confirm this?

 

Nope, but then again I was never booked on it, my observation was based purely on receiving marketing emails from WCR. Seems odd to cancel considering their earlier email suggested pretty full?

 

I wonder if it has anything to do with Preston being included this week in Covid tier 2 restrictions.

 

Could be, could also be that 6201 is not available (note she was not substituted for Alberta at the weekend which left the Jubilee rather struggling with the load).

 

I think it's been cancelled for a few weeks now. Basically since it disappeared off the Northern belle web site.

 

I noticed that there had been no mention of the tour on the NB website of late, I just assumed that the tour had been sold out, hence its removal from their listing. A poster had even stated purchasing a ticket for the 17th (post 36) - I wonder if he has had some communication from NB but hasn't had a chance to update the thread yet. The insertion to state that the tour was now cancelled on the RH website has only just appeared today, I think.

 

I was meant to be booked onto it but unfortunately had to cancel my booking due to family reasons, but I believe the tour was cancelled

 

Excluding the recent Northern Belle's, Lizzie's last job was the CME of 12th October 2019 (orig Euston). She also did two other CME's in 2019: 10th August (orig Euston) and 20th July (orig Crewe).

60103 did a CME on 4th August 2018 (orig Crewe).

 

They need an air braked loco for the Northern Belle

 

The CME isn’t a WCR in house operation. I’m assuming that if promoted by West Coast, in the same way Saphos promoted tours are, then in house locos would be the go to. The CME being an RTC tour, as long as WCR can operate the loco, then its at their request what operates the tour?

 

My impression is that there are conversations between the two parties. For example, back in early March, such a conversation was about to happen re putting number 9 on the CME when the virus crisis hit. But that's a bit different from deciding what to do when the chosen loco goes tech 24 or 36 hours away from the tour, which seems to have been the situation last week. In that situation, the operator will be determining what is the best practicable Plan B.

 

Do you mean on the CME last Saturday?

I'd guess

SG--- scheduled for the job, not fit to run for whatever reason when checked out last Thursday or Friday morning.

BIL--- after the stellar two years in 2018/9, she has not seemed at the same level this year. Quite apart from the slipping and sliding, all cannot have been quite right on the Lune Rivers. Maybe requiring and/or receiving some attention?

6201--- probably would require discussions with the owner especially to run solo. The deal seems to be this loco is used by prior agreement on specified runs, not as part of the Carnforth pool.

In the circumstances, using the Jubilee was the best practicable option. And it might be worth pointing out that 4 mins of the delay to the Glasgow train was down to the late start from Carnforth which was quite possibly not down to WCR. I see there were problems with the Barrow train between Lancaster and Carnforth, so maybe Control was waiting to see what the score was there which cost some minutes hooking on.

All conjecture on my part.

 

That does seem to be the case. Historically, 6201's support crew has been quite small and has found it hard to take up short-notice offers of extra work. It wouldn't surprise me if that's still true.

 

My understanding is that 6201 no longer has a dedicated support crew and any crews that go out with her are West Coast Support Crew members

 

Northern Belle have just released a few more tours with Lizzie for next year, from Liverpool, York and Birmingham area with the loco joining at Carnforth for Shap and the S&C