Those who caught this morning’s Advent Calendar Post would have seen an advanced preview of today’s blog post. Yesterday (December 8th), 34067 Tangmere worked “The Bath Christmas Market”; a mainline steam excursion running from Three Bridges to Bristol.
The rail tour ran via Haywards Heath, Chichester and Bath. It paused at Eastleigh station, where it was photographed here; before it moved on to Romsey, the next stop.
The locomotive is a member of Bulleid’s Battle of Britain class. Unlike some members of the class, it was never rebuilt and it still has the distinctive air-smoothed casing.
34067 Tangmere has deservedly built up a good reputation on the mainline circuit. The locomotive arrived almost ten minutes early on this occasion.
The early arrival gave a longer than expected chance to have a good look at the locomotive; which was just as well, as the contrast of light and dark created by the low winter sun was playing havoc with my camera’s exposure system!
I hope you have enjoyed seeing these pictures of steam in December. Hopefully they might inspire many of you to enter the Christmas photo competition!