Mid Norfolk Railway (MNR) 11th May 2014

At short notice the Mid Norfolk Railway (MNR) announced that they’d be running a joint weekend event with the North Norfolk Railway (NNR) with 31207 operating 5 round trips at the North Norfolk on Saturday 10th May and 31235 operating 5 round trips at the Mid Norfolk on Sunday 11th May.

Unfortunately for the second time during 2014 the North Norfolk let the side down and announced only 2 days before the weekend that 31207 wasn’t available for traffic; with 37032 being substituted, again! Thankfully the Mid Norfolk didn’t let the side down and those making the journey to Anglia for a bright and early start, at 0830 on a Sunday morning, we rewarded with a decent day of thrash, not to mention over 100 miles of class 31 haulage during the day!

31235 was faultless throughout the day, unlike the weather which was nothing short of crappy for most of the day. The drivers rostered to drive ‘235 were all decent drivers and the thrash sampled throughout the day was consistent from trip to trip. Strangely once ‘235 had warmed up it’s diverts started to drop out after coming in; this not evident on the first trip, while the loco was still cold. This is a persistent issue that 31235 seems to be suffering with but other than that it had a good day out and hopefully there’ll be more of these events during the year?

For such a good day’s running the turnout wasn’t that great, possibly due to the weather? Even so there weren’t many normal folk turning up either, which didn’t make the day a great success at all for the Railway; hopefully this won’t put them off doing it again……

31235 worked the following:

0830, 1030, 1245, 1530 & 1730 Dereham – Wymondham Abbey

0930, 1130, 1345, 1630 & 1830 Wymondham Abbey – Dereham

Photos of the day: