A FEW eyebrows were certainly raised when UK Railtours revealed its ‘Class 56 Farewell’ railltour for September 17, not least because it was not exactly the end of the Class 56s. Now, if the tour was titled ‘GBRf Class 56 Farewell’, that might have been more accurate.
What this means is that the long-lived locomotive type, dating from the 1970s, will have had three farewell tours – the first in 2004, the second in September 2022, and the third when they literally end their Network Rail touring days in a year yet to be decided.
Pathfinder Tours commemorated the class’s demise in 2004 when, on March
