D5310 made a successful debut at the Great Central Railway Diesel Gala on 18th and 19th May, joining Class 25 D7612 visting from the South Devon Railway and resident Class 27 D5401 to provide a superb trio of Sulzer Type 2s as part of an impressive and varied 8 locomotive line up. The highlight was being able to sample all 3 Type 2s on the Saturday evening Beerex, with D5310 double heading with both D7612 and D5401. Unfortunately D7612 was suffering from electrical problems which resulted in her failure on Sunday morning – an awful piece of luck for the SDR team after they had put in a massive amount of work to get the 25 repainted and ready for the event
D5310 behaved impeccably and was crewed by LDG members all weekend. A minor leak on the instrument pipe to the gauge for the vacuum chamber at No 2 end caused a slight headache on Saturday morning, but was switfly repaired by Group Chairman and CME Mark Smales, with the more time being spent removing the driver’s seat in order to get to it and then finding a replacement washer (amazing what you can find on the floor of the clean air room)! An intermittent speedometer fault, also at Number 2 end, became more frequent on Saturday afternoon, but use of GPS apps on the crew’s phones got round this. We suspect one of the components in the gauge itself has failed, so it will need to be removed for inspection.
Jim Mosley’s superb and timeless photo below shows D5310 cruising towards Quorn and Woodhouse in both an idyllic setting and (unusually!) weather on Sunday 18th May.
We would like to extend a massive thank you to all at the GCR who have been involved in looking after us so far, particularly Steven Chappell, GCR Operations Manager, who has masterminded the visit.
Thanks also go to everyone in the LDG who has helped make the visit happen, with considerable preparations being made in a short timescale. Tom Shilliam and Paul Williams manned our sales stand on Loughborough station on Sunday and took over £150 – an excellent result for the Group’s funds.
D5310 is scheduled to take part in a GCR Sulzer Type 2 running day on June 15th and 16th, but this will be subject to repairs on D7612. Watch this space!