Visit to the Great Central Railway
It is a policy of our branch that at least one of the monthly fixtures in the UK each year should be to a heritage railway. The chosen railway for this year was the Great Central Railway which received planning permission in June 2025 for its reunification with the northern part of the Midland line in Nottinghamshire.
Buying tickets on line proved to be quite a challenge as the GCR’s website is slow and user-unfriendly but most members managed it in the end. It must be said immediately that the opposite is true of the volunteers and staff at the GCR who could not have been more friendly and helpful, and the stations and infrastructure are beautifully maintained.
Our numbers were reduced by illness to just six and one of those never made it as he fell foul of train cancellations, only arriving at Loughborough when it was time to go home.
The remaining five all experienced delays and missed connections on the way to Loughborough but these were minor compared with our recent experiences and did not prevent us from all catching the steam-hauled 11:30 from Loughborough to Leicester North and back again.
As it was the August holiday period the trains were all very busy with lots of families enjoying the ride, which is good news for the GCR and for the families too!
The Standard 2MT 2-6-0 78019 and the blue class 101 DMU (M50203 and E50266) alternated the rides for the day.
The GCR also allow passengers to walk down the cinder path to the shed area at Loughborough, and our members were not the only ones to happily take advantage of this offer!
The locos and units noted on the day are listed below.
Steam
6990, 34039 (boiler only), 68067, 78018, 78019, 92214
Diesel
1705, 13101, 27056, 37714, 50017, 55019, D4067, D6535, D6700, D8098
Units
E50266, E50321, M50203, W59506, 153308, 153371
