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!