The Anonymous Widower

What A Way To Run a Railway

GBRf is a rail freight company in the UK and it has a shortage of motive power.

Could this be in part to what I saw last Thursday, whilst sitting outside a pub outside Thurston station in Suffolk, where in a brief period of perhaps forty minutes, three long freight trains trundled along between Felixstowe and Peterborough? I’ve done this many times before and never seen one.  So as I’ve reported before a lot of heavy freight is now going by train.

So I was surprised to see that they are hiring in a 50-year-old Deltic locomotive, Royal Scots Grey,  to move freight in the North East. It must make commercial sense to both companies involved. It is rather a tribute to the Deltic, but surely with better planning a few years ago, instead of scrapping these wonderful locootives, they should have been properly stored. After all one my most memorable train trips was behind a Deltic. 

We sometimes decry the quality of engineering in this country.  But the list of things we should be proud of keeps getting longer and the Deltic has just got itself added.

April 25, 2011 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Freight, Trains