YP Letters: Fear not, main line steam is still in good heart

Tornado, the newest steam locomotive in Britain, pulls the first timetabled main line steam-hauled service for half a century across the Ribblehead viaduct in North Yorkshire.

WHILST not wishing to detract from the current spectacle of steam on the Settle and Carlisle line to promote its imminent re-opening, I might suggest that your report (The Yorkshire Post, February 15) is not entirely accurate in its references to main line steam.

The end of steam on British Rail was indeed marked by the Fifteen Guinea Special on 11 August 1968 (regular steam operations had actually finished a week earlier); however, a relaxation of the steam ‘ban’ came only three years later, in 1971, and led to the re-introduction of steam specials, hauled by privately-owned preserved steam locomotives.

Since 1995 and rail privatisation, this company, West Coast Railways, has run a regular timetabled service, daily from Easter to October (and twice-daily in high summer), between Fort William and Mallaig, ‘the Iron Road to the Isles’, in the West Highlands of Scotland. In that time, it has also become the principal main line steam operating company, running regular summer trips between York and Scarborough, as well as the Settle and Carlisle line. With several hundred steam charters running annually on the network, main line steam remains in good heart.