Happy Sunday everyone.
Well it’s been a very interesting day to say the least.
Today I set off with my good friend Adam for a day out on a steam train. Sounded like a great idea.
We received an email on Friday to say that network Rail had imposed a steam ban in the North West region so we were unable to have steam from our origin Liverpool Lime Street as far as Chester. Was a little bit upsetting for us but I guess it is what it is.
Upon leaving Liverpool Lime Street we picked up passengers at Broad Green, Warrington Bank Quay & Chester then we picked up our steam train LMS Black 5 locomotive 45212.
We were then on our way to our next station stop of Llandudno Junction. It was a lovely hot summers day when we were travelling up the beautiful North Wales Coast. Along they way we were happy to see Adams parents who were at their caravan at Presthaven Sands and also my friend Kieran at Colwyn Bay.
Then what seemed to be a good day turned into a bit of a disaster.
On the approach to Llandudno Junction there was a points failure which caused us a delay arriving into the station. Watering took place here which delayed our train by 60 minutes. After Llandudno junction we stopped at Bangor and finally our destination Holyhead 60 minutes at 3:42pm.
So upon arrival into Holyhead we watched the locomotive being taken off ready for its trip to valley to use the triangle there to turn around for the return journey. We had a leisurely walk into town to have a bit of a look around and returned to the train at 5:30pm fro the 6:05pm departure back to Liverpool. But the locomotives hadn’t moved moved. Due to a signalling failure and points failure in Holyhead the trains were unable to move. After a lot of scratching of heads by lots of people and nobody having a clue what was going on they finally decided to run the steam train tender first bck to Chester. It’s a big thing this as we are limited to 45mph. We finally departed Holyhead at 7:43pm 98 minutes late.
As I write today’s blog I’m currently sat on the train on the way home with Adam and the two lovely people that we met on the train today.
Anyway time for another whisky and I’ll update the rest of the timings for our journey home tomorrow.
In the meantime please feel free to have a look through today’s programme which has detailed information abut the places we have visited. Ignoring the timings of course. I don’t know why they bothered putting them in there