Hello & Welcome to Harnetty Railways

Coming up on our 1st steam charter filming of 2020.

We are chasing 1 of Sir William Stanier's finest designs of The London Midland & Scottish Railway LMS Black 5.

We review in this video Jeremy Hosking's black 5 45231 The Sherwood Forester a former Carnforth loco in late January & early February in the build up to the 1st Saphos trip of 2020.

We start on the preview day with 45231 on a light test run from Crewe to Chester & back twice 1 in the morning & 1 in the afternoon.

We 1st see 45231 arriving into Crewe to complete the morning run to Chester via Beeston Castle before rolling into the station after turning round to take on water ready for the afternoon run to Chester.

We end the preview day at Chester as we see 45231 running over half an hour early with the arrival & passing through the station on the return run.

(Please note the filming at Chester when 45231 was heading back to Crewe was taken from the safety of behind the barrier at Chester station car park)

The test run was a success & Sherwood was ready to work the 1st Saphos Train's tour of 2020 The North Wales Coast Express which resulted in bringing 45231 The Sherwood Forester back to Holyhead for the 1st time since July 2013.

We start at Rhyl as we see the black 5 passing through with 11 coaches & a class 47 in tow after taking over at Crewe from diesel haulage which brought the train in from Leicester earlier that morning.

At this point 45231 was running 10 minutes early by the time the train reached my location & made another 4 minutes by the time the water stop at Llandudno Junction was reached.

We end this video at Holyhead as we see 45231 arriving into the station wearing The Irish Mail headboard remembering the days when The Irish Mail ran from Euston via the WCML as far as Crewe then along the Chester line via Beeston Castle to reach the North Wales Coast.

Unfortunetly the filming for the returning was cancelled due to a points failure at Valley which unabled 45231 to turn around for the return trip back to Crewe & the tour ended up going back to Leicester behind diesel haulage.

Later in the evening 45231 did return to Crewe with support coach running tender 1st nonstop.

Not the way Saphos Trains & Locomotive Services wanted to start their 2020 campaign circumstances beyond their control they could only say sorry.

Thanks for reading enjoy the video of black 5 45231 The Sherwood Forester.

#45231TheSherwoodForester #IconsofSteam #SaphosTrains

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