71000 Duke of Gloucester
August Bank Holiday Monday 2004
71000 looked magnificent as it rolled into Bangor on its
first passenger carrying run since overhaul, this being the 1Z53 06:50 Nottingham-Holyhead
Railway Touring Company charter.
The twelve coaches were full but some seats were vacated by passengers taking
the option of a coach trip to the Welsh Highland Railway. We negotiated a
fare for the 38 minute ride to the terminus and back, then hopped aboard.
We felt like royalty ourselves as every vantage point was occupied by photographers,
those without cameras waved and some of the sales staff at the Pringles store
at Llanfair PG popped out to admire our passage.
At Holyhead, the Duke was watered then freed to run into the headshunt and around its stock.
71000 prepares to shunt the stock into a siding to release
platform 1 for service trains