The Duke is back
The last few months of 2025 have been a mix of highs and lows. The euphoria of the Impossible Dream trip had not worn off before everyone came back down with a bump two days later on the Chairman’s Train when the left-hand inlet tappet in the bottom of the Caprotti box stuck down and The Duke had to be taken off the train at Carnforth.
Thanks to the engineers and crews at LSL and the BRC8SLT volunteer Service Crew, a quick repair job was completed on The Duke, and he was able to take the scheduled timings back to Crewe on the Saturday afternoon, albeit only from Carnforth.
If you’re going to fail, then doing so adjacent to West Coast Railways isn’t too bad a place, as they generously allowed us the use of their workshop and to turn the locomotive on their turntable. A fantastic team effort by all involved!
After a few weeks to check everything out, The Duke’s first public charter outing took place on November 6th, a trip from Crewe to Carlisle and return carrying the ‘Royal Scot’ headboard.
An excellent account of that trip, by John Heaton FCILT, described as a ‘magnificent ascent of Shap’, can be found in the December 2025 Railway Magazine, Practice and Performance article.
December’s tour programme began on the 2nd, hauling the Saphos Trains ‘Bath Christmas Market Express’ from Willesden to Bath Spa, followed by another trip to Bath on the 4th, and all reports indicated The Duke performed exceptionally well. The highs were then followed by two lows, an AWS failure that, like any ill wind, led to some interesting photo opportunities (a couple of which are featured later) and an unscheduled brief encounter with a buffer stop.
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same”
So wrote Rudyard Kipling… but I doubt he ever envisaged running a steam locomotive on the mainline!
I hope you enjoy this article from our Trust members’ Newsletter. If you have a photo you’d like to share with The Duke Family in the next newsletter, please let us know.