Peak Rail May & June 2015
The long awaited return to traffic of Peak Rail based 31270 occurred on 12th May when it replaced D8 as the diesel of choice on the booked service train; D8 needing to be taken out of traffic for repairs. 31270 would be rostered to work every train for the foreseeable future as no other diesel loco was available at Peak Rail with D8 being taken out of traffic.
Saturday 16th May 2015
After a successful test run the previous week 31270 behaved itself and I managed to make it down the following weekend on Saturday 16th May; which just so happened to coincide with a Heritage Shutners Trust Gala weekend. Things didn’t get off to a good start at all as when I arrived the Matlock end of the platform was cordoned off and laid in the tracks was a guy who’d managed to slip out of the steam loco while climbing down earlier. Said person was taking the driver experience course and ended up being taken to hospital 90 minute later, having not even got “Lord Phil” onto the train. Thankfully he was fine but the first train of the day was an hour late and the railway lost a group party from Matlock as a result. By dinner time everything was back to normal; the bonus of the morning being that a few rods could be done on the brake van rides while trains on the main line couldn’t run; and what I needed jusy happened to be out at the right time so for me it was a very successful day.
31270 had no issues at all and thanks to track works having been completed during the winter months the line speed from Matlock Riverside to Darley Dale has been restored to 25mph so there’s now a little bit more to listen to when 31270 gets the train going!
Photos from the day:
Tuesday 2nd June 2015
A pretty run of the mill outing really, thankfully without event and relatively few people about. Unfortunately the driver of 31270 wasn’t as good as the one a couple of weeks previous but all the crews did say that they haven’t had any issues with ‘270 since its return to traffic and if anything it is slightly better than it was before its stint out of traffic.
Photos from the day:
