Staged in April 2007, many said the Railway Touring Company’s epic nine-day Great Britain railtour was not possible. It did however go ahead completely as planned and can now be held up as one of the great success stories of railway preservation history.
No less than seven different locomotives hauled the Great Britain initially from Paddington to Bristol. The tour proper started from Penzance and carried on through Wales, across the fells of northwest England and into Scotland. From Inverness a one-day trip visited the Kyle of Lochalsh before the main tour carried on to Thurso .
This programme uses steam days cine archive footage to show the classes of locomotive used during the tour plus giving the opertunity to witness some of the locations along the route as they were in days now long gone.
All nine days of the tour are covered and include steam working at its hardest on gradients such as Hemerdon Bank, Shap, Beattock and the climbs to Drumochter summit and Slochd summit.
The locomotives used can be considered to be amongst the cream of the British main line steam fleet and comprised No. 6233 Duchess of Sutherland, No. 71000 Duke of Gloucester, No. 6024 King Edward I, No. 5051 Earl Bathurst, No. 60009 Union of South Africa, No. 61994 The Great Marquees and 8F No. 48151. |
