Wednesday 1st December 2010 saw the running of an excursion organised by CompassTours from Worcester Shrub Hill to Edinburgh. With the weather as it was, especially worse the further north you went, this looked like a decidedly risky undertaking but, as it turned out, all went very well indeed.
The empty stock arrived from Crewe at about 03.00 in the morning and had to be routed onto the up through goods line, as the thirteen coach train, top-and-tailed by class 67 locomotives, required the leading engine to run-round in order to double-head the excursion away. These movements were an impossibility to undertake in the station itself with such a lengthy consist. Part of these manoeuvres meant propelling the train out of the yard and onto the down main line so it could draw forward into platform one. Departure was on-time at 05.00 which necessitated the re-platforming of the 05.02 F.G.W. service to Paddington onto platform two.
Although the excursion was heavily delayed en-route, arrival time at Edinburgh was only fifteen minutes late, and a more-or-less right time departure on return saw an arrival back at Worcester nearly twenty minutes EARLY. This caused a few problems at Shrub Hill as the excursion arrived before the late-running last train from Snow Hill. Luckily the train was top-and-tailed on arrival and after some deliberation it was decided to return the coaching stock to Crewe in this formation. The train ground to a halt on the Lickey incline and had to be assisted by a following freight service but eventually made it into Birmingham some time later.
Steve Widdowson's photograph shows a snow-encrusted 67030 being prepared to leave Worcester at one'o clock on the 2nd with the empty stock bound for Crewe.
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