IDEAS mooted over drinks in the pub don’t usually come to fruition.
Yet on February 25, as No. 47712 Lady Diana Spencer stood at Glasgow Queen Street on a matching rake of ScotRail Mk.3s having just propelled its train from Edinburgh Waverley, its owners could be forgiven for questioning that theory. Not that they would have believed it a decade ago.
The Crewe Diesel Preservation Group (CDPG), based at the Crewe Heritage Centre, had never intended to return a Class 47 to the main line. Indeed, it had not even intended to own a ‘47’! Yet on April 14, the CDPG celebrated a decade of owning the ‘47/7’ by organising a railtour from Crewe to Carlisle, running north via the West Coast Main Line and returning via the Settle & Carlisle, Blackburn and the WCML. Again, the locomotive powered the ScotRail set from Locomotive Services’ fleet and propelled the train in both directions.
Jonathan Rawlinson is one of three members of the CDPG, with Andrew Quayle and Brian Bailey. He’s also the engineering director of Locomotive Services and has been charged with creating the itineraries for tours using the ‘47/7’ and stock. When you consider that the first train, the epic three-day tour from Crewe-Edinburgh on February 24, a return blast between Edinburgh and Glasgow Queen Street and up to Inverness on February for LS last September.
