'Change Here For Appleby'

Forty-nine years after the ‘15 Guinea Special’, it’s the ‘£17.70 Ordinary’… NICK BRODRICK savours February’s ‘Plandampf’.

- Richard Foster

You wait 49 years for a timetabled main line steam hauled service train in England - then six come along at once… Tornado picked up the thread where ‘Black Fives’ Nos. 45318 and 45212 left off on August 3 1968, by running a series of diagrammed service trains over the iconic Settle-Carlisle line in February.

These normal trains were actually some of the most extraordinary that steam has been involved in since British Rail lifted its unlamented steam ban in 1971. Semi-fasts returned to the Pennines as No. 60163 was entrusted with its first ever ‘real’ passenger trains since it was completed by the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust in 2008. Main line ‘thrash’ for the price of a standard off-peak ticket £17.70 without railcards - on three returns, replacing humdrum Class 158s was a reality.

The Darlington ‘Pacific’ should have completed its three days of scheduled Northern trains over the S&C by the end of February 16 - the day after Steam Railway closed for press.

It was too early, therefore, for the magazine to categorically declare the ‘I LOVE S&C’ trains a complete triumph.

Feeling the love

But by the end of Valentine’s Day, its profound impact had already been warmly felt in Yorkshire and Cumbria; a groundswell of emotion that was epitomised by the primary school in Settle, whose pupils were freed from their normal lessons to cheer on something equally routine - the 10.44am to Appleby.