ELR October Steam Gala

Many thanks to all those hordes who descended on the ELR over the weekend to enjoy the best attended steam gala for many years. Many thanks to all those who thought of the idea (you know who you are), well in advance and produced a spectacular weekend show for the railway and the public. Some extremely long hours were worked by many - both paid staff and volunteer to produce this event for which grateful thanks are given.
There will be no comment from the ELR regarding the posts made regarding photographers other than it is regretful that a statement that had to be issued three years ago following observations made by the 'relevant' authorities has been placed on this site today - presumably in an attempt to stir past happenings up, by someone who the ELR will also not comment any further about.

 

Missed Saturday but managed a couple of shots of the A4s on Sunday. No.9 at Townsend Fold and No.7 at Irwell Vale.

 

Nice shots Alan !

 

Well, that man must have been an idiot. He is lucky not to have ended up on a mortuary slab, in bits!
Well done for challenging him.

 

Thanks John.

 

Many thanks to the organisers....excellent gala visit on Sunday!

Shame about the afternoon rain and delays, but hey-ho, nothings perfect.

Looking forwards to the Winter gala in the new year!

 

Both parties have said theirs no further comment, so as all comments are made.. lets move on.

 

Thoroughly enjoyed the visit yesterday, it was great to see the line as busy as it was, certainly a struggle to cross the footbridge at Ramsbottom at times.

Timekeeping was a major problem, but I am sure that will be looked at for the next event.

Good runs with 60007, 1300/13065 double header and 61994.

Nice to have 1370/47324 on the shuttle around the station.

Many thanks to all involved at the ELR.

 

Had a great day on Friday night and Saturday, excellent timetable, shame about delays but praise for not cancelling trains (excluding the curtailed parcels) which actually I didn't end up missing much after spending a morning at Burrs I then spent the best part of an hour trying to find a place to park in Bury, Ramsbottom and finally Rawtenstall. Great line up and really enjoyable.

Pictures and video at... http://preservedrailway.weebly.com/elr-autumn-steam-gala.html

 

If anybody fancies a trip with SNG this weekend;

A4 60007 'Sir Nigel Gresley' is the scheduled steam loco for Sat & Sun 25/26 October service trains.

Ordinary fares apply.

Steam diagram is:

0930 Bury - Heywood
1000 Heywood - Rawtenstall
1105 Rawtenstall - Heywood
1215 Heywood - Rawtenstall
1335 Rawtenstall - Heywood
1450 Heywood - Rawtenstall
1605 Rawtenstall - Bury

 

Had a great time on Sunday the trains were busy and just to take in the atmosphere and all the activity at Bolton st was in my view worth the ticket price.

 

Some pictures from the ELR including the Steam Gala on Saturday.

http://xbill.smugmug.com/Steam-Trains-UK/Trains/20140809-East-Lancs-Railway/

 

My brother & I enjoyed the gala too, with a great mix of locos and an interesting albeit probably slightly too ambitious timetable - that is once we got going though as we started off at Rawtenstall where we got on the first train, but then the Marquess was running late so we chose to get off & wait for SNG so we could stick to our planned timetable, but we know what happened with SNG don't we, which I have to say I thought ELR handled very well. After that there did seem to be a lot of waiting to be done at stations but come early afternoon things did seem to flow a lot better. We were glad that even though the timetable was gone for the day, the order was kept the same, which meant we were able to do pretty much what we had planned, although we were not appreciative of the surprise we got when getting off at Bury, where we heard the station announcement of the last service to Rawtenstall, which according to the timetable was supposed to be the penultimate service, fortunately we just made it - we assumed therefore that the last train i.e. the double headed A4's was cancelled, so did the other people in our carriage as well as the guard, so we went home thus unfortunately we missed them, but it did mean we got to see the Duchess on her move back to Crewe instead.

 

Excellent weekend. Pictures and Vids uploaded to.

http://steammemories.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Excellent Autumn Gala, well done ELR . Pictures and Vids uploaded to

http://steammemories.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Videos and pictures from the gala, what an event. As others have said, excellent weekend

https://www.flickr.com/photos/66203188@N03/with/15385139588/