february half term was full of action for me. i start a day early on the 18th of february where i left peterborough rather earlyand headed for norwich and anglia, today was the start of my first ever 3 days in 7 anglia rover and to start off with i had 4 return trips between norwich and ipswich before heading off to sheringham to end the day and start a weekend away with some friends, the next day i had a lot of free time so me and a couple others from the group visited the North Norfolk Railway where we got haulage on a class 37 (D6737) currently on hire from the South Deven Railway and resident J15 no. 65462. sunday was time to go home and was day 2 on my 3 in 7 rover, went home from sheringham via norwich, ely, cambridge and ely. monday and wednesday were days off where as tuesday was utilised to get the train to spalding so i could get to a gig via a coach in sheffield. thursday it was decided to finish the use of my 3 days in 7 by bashing class 90s all day between norwich and ipswich and in all i got atleast 6 return trips. friday and saturday were also spare but i got atleast a little while spotting on one of the days and sunday the train was used again to get to Bury ST Edmunds to see some friends however between cambridge and Bury i had to use a replacement bus or taxi in the case of the return thanks to a careless driver leaving me behind

if you visited the great central railway betweeen the 28th and 30th of january you might've mistaken it for the busy railway junction of banbury on the great western reigion. and with 5 westerners, 1 LNER, SR & LMS loco surprisingly nothing built after 1948 you could easily have been mistaken. leading the pack in this mighty event were 3717 City Of Truro in it's new livery, 2-8-0 3850 also in a new livery painted especially for the event/appearance at the GCR, 5526 & 1450 sharing auto train/local/freight duties, with 4953 Pitchford Hall, black 5 no. 45305, 30777 Sir Lamiel and scottish interlude 61994 The Great Marquess (BINGO!)
as a fan of the western reigion you might think i'm slightly biast here but in general the GCR does such a great job at organising galas i have no choice. it was a brilliant gala. my highlights were 3850 on the minerals, 3717 & 45305 on the TPO, 5526 on the short freight and the super timetable for the event with atleast 30 departures from loughborough central on both saturday and sunday however some down points that need to be raised are that the timetable ran 20 minutes late, the earth that makes rothley bank ate my watch when i fell over up there, 1450 did no auto train workings on the saturday when i went (it also faced the wrong way) despite these small niggles it was still a brilliant gala. photos and videos are now up on the appropriate sites