first tour of 2013

after my shinanigans on the friday though i was very tired i was out the next day (saturday) to go down to finsbury park, why go there? to get myself on the first railtour of 2013 which i booked a while ago. this was the uk railtours excursion from finsbury park to high marnham via peterborough, syston north curve and toton. after toton we joined the robin hood line which runs from nottingham to worksop with a triangle at shirebrook which connections there for some collieries and ofcourse the high marnham test track. after passing the colliery junctions and stopping to top up the water in the carriages we ventured onto the test track which involved jumping the east coast mainline at tuxford. after our interesting visit to the test track the tour continued taking the other part of the triangle to continue heading north towards worksop. at the next junction the tour didn't head towards worksop instead it took the other route towards shireoaks. sadly our time at the test track was over spent and our timings along that part of the route were far from generous and we were an hour late due to speed restrictions on the test track that weren't taken into account. moving onto that info i was told by the stewarts we took the junction west of shireoaks onto the south yorkshire joint line (closed to passengers since 1929) i must say this was an interesting route and we soon found ourselves on the east coast mainline again this time at doncaster, we travelled through the royal mail terminus and the station avoider, getting some very rare track along the way. we then took the swinton avoider then through rotherham central to find ourselves running parralel to the sheffield super trams. we then headed into tinsley yard which now sees less use than it did in it's heyday. the tour continued from here again clinging to the side of the tram route joining the doncaster to sheffield route at nunnery juntion to continue into sheffield, from there (and after surprising my girlfriend who was there for the day) the tour started heading south again along the midland mainline to head back to loughborough via toton again. after toton and dropping off tons of passengers the tour went again down the syston north curve stopping everywhere it did on it's way north. i admit it was a brilliant day and the class 66s pulling the train were amazing. another amaing day out thanks to the lads at ukrailtours