No Saturday blog, so some pretty pictures

 I was in C&W on Saturday, but spent most of the day sorting out the dodgy bearing on the starfish we had to take out of the goods train during the gala. All entertaining stuff, but not really conducive to peeling off to take blog photos.

So have a few photos of mine from the last week during Betton Grange testing, the gala itself, and the photo charter afterwards instead to tide you over.

Friday was loaded test day for the Grange, out with 7 Mk1s along the full length of the line. We paus at Gotherington to check temperatures, all good.

We made it down to Cheltenham...

...And all the way up to Broadway. No issues, a job very well done.

The rest of the day was general gala prep, there was last jobs to do on the goods train etc. then a small photo charter around the yard at Toddington with all the engines on shed. Various locos were moved around for different views.

We moved 2807 onto the goods set for a bit which looked the part.

It turned into a very pleasant evening, with a BBQ on the welfare building mezzanine for volunteers too.

All lined up ready to go.

Last light, all prep done, here we go.

I was guard on Saturday, but not 'til the afternoon, so time to watch a couple of trains first, Dinmore Manor heads the early morning goods out of Toddington.

It seemed proper to capture video of Betton Grange's first public revenue earning departure for posterity.

Later on and I'm in my natural habitat, guard on the Queen Mary. We've been shunted into a siding to let a double header through.

Sunday morning I headed up to Laverton to catch the early morning goods up to Broadway with 9351 up front.

Later on captured at Winchcombe - it did look good on the wagons.

Monday a few of us did the same later in the day with the Saint on the goods, it's a handy location as there are views either side in either direction for any loco facing/sun direction combination. Here though we thought we were about to get very wet!

We beat it back to Todd to capture it again.

The day after the gala, and as if we weren't tired enough/had enough fun, there was another photo charter, this time out on the line with the grange, and they'd requested the goods set. It was a bit of a dull day unfortunately, but we trundled up to Broadway, rearranged the brake vans and did a few run throughs

After a stop at Stanway aqueduct we did a few gallery run pasts around Toddington, at least you can get a decent view of the full train here.

The sun made a brief appearance, hurrah!

I often feel Toddington station is underappreciated, it really is very well kept and pretty original too, as much as can be expected given it deals with a lot more passengers now anyway.

Next stop was the tunnel for some exit shots, I grabbed another video.

We finished off at Hayles for a few shots there, just as the cloud started to clear and the light faded.

So we hot-footed it up to Didbrook, suddenly it was looking rather good...

That's the money shot!

So there we are, hopefully normal service will be resumed next week. As ever the gala was enormous fun to be a part of running, everyone seemed to enjoy it which is of course the primary purpose, and we also made a healthy profit for the railway, so we can do it all again another time :-)