LMS Jubilee class Bahamas

Sitting looking through Facebook posts threw up an alert to say that the Kentish Belle excursion operated by the Railway Touring Company was passing through Bearsted at around 10.15 enroute from Victoria to Faversham via Maidstone, Ashford, Canterbury West and back along the North Kent line to Victoria.

Jubilee Class loco Bahamas was built in 1934 and worked in many areas of the country and is now based at the Keithley and Worth Valley Railway. For many years the engine was based at Crewe with members of the class working from Stafford, through my home town of Wellington and on to Shrewsbury in the 1950s and 60s. I have a video showing one of the class at Wellington station.

It was too good an opportunity to miss, as did lots of other people who were on the platforms and the overbridges to watch the train scream through at speed, with the smell and the sound making you tingle all over.

Then it was gone, tail ended by a class 47 diesel which all excursions have nowadays in case of breakdowns.

It was interesting to see an LMS loco on Southern metals, something that didn’t happen while in service with British Railways. And the opposite of what we saw in Edinburgh in March: https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2951936550214043871 - a Southern loco on Scottish metals - also operated by the Railway Touring Company.

Everything else today after that brief moment of ecstasy was a bit of an anticlimax. A run, a walk into town and a struggle at the allotment. The Uketok session was good though.