Nene Valley Railway (NVR) August 2013

During August the Nene Valley Railway had to resort to diesel haulage on most of their services; the Steam Ban resulting in A1A Locomotives 31108 seeing a ramp up in work, in fact more than any other Summer since its preservation!

31108 worked the following days during August, working the whole service on the green timetable each time (4 round trips), except 10th & 11th where it was rostered its booked two trips only. Unfortunately for the kettle out on Sat 10th though ‘108 had to go to its rescue and worked all but one train that day also:

3rd, 4th, 10th, 11th, 18th, 19th & 21st and at the time of writing was rostered 28th & likely 31st & 1st September.

During the day on Wednesday 14th August, while the Steam Ban had been lifted, one of the steam locos managed to set fire to the line-side vegetation which then spread into an adjacent field, ripe with wheat. The result was a rather large scorch mark in the middle of some otherwise untouched crop, which was to be harvested in the very near future. This incident actually made the national news. The result of course; the Steam Ban being re-implemented! Yet the NVR did tempt fate during their TPO demonstration weekend when using a very smoky industrial steam loco to work the short trips. Bizarrely since then the rain has prevented the farmers harvesting the rest of the crop……….

31108 performed as well as ever during all my visits and remains one of the loudest and crispest sounding 31s in preservation; nothing short of a monster!

Photos from 3rd August:

Photos from the weekend of 17th / 18th August: