Class 20

Standing on top of the Greet Tunnel entrance I managed to get a shot of the BR Green Class 20 coming up the line from Cheltenham race course, on it's way to Winchcombe station. 

This is the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway and I was lucky enough to bump into a train enthusiast - there seem to be many - who was all too eager to tell me about the best vantage spots for a shot. I had left him on a bridge in Gretton and drove off to find the tunnel. 

Standing knee high in brambles to get a shot on a bend in the glorious sunshine having seen no-one in the area at all here after having walked miles round random fields to find the line, I was startled to hear a, 'Hello' right behind me.  The same guy again! He knew an even better spot but said people rarely went there but it was just down the path. Now, it crossed my mind  and not just fleetingly, that I was following a bloke, in a deserted area, nobody knew where I was, no phone to hand and it could be really dodgy! However ...it was all good... well not quite as he kept up an incessant monologue of train spotting facts ( believe me there are quite a few!) for nearly an hour and a half in a very well meaning way as I openly confessed (big mistake) to knowing very little about the art. It had, Train Spotting that is, split him and his girlfriend up .....ha ........well I could quite clearly see why! 

A quick Google - the Class 20 otherwise known as an English Electric Type 1 is a class of diesel-electric locomotive. 228 were built by English Electric between 1957 and 1968, producing 1000 horsepower and can operate to 121km/h.