Railway Herald
On the second day of operation to the new GBRf facility at Leyland near Preston, GBRf Class 66/7 No. 66793 passes Long Preston with the 06.55 Rylstone Quarry - Leyland Enterprise Sidings loaded JNA box wagons conveying aggregates. By road a journey of around 45 miles this working takes an interesting route from Rylstone to Blea Moor to run round, then via Hellifield to take the Ribble Valley/East Lancashire lines to Farrington Junction to join the WCML, then south to Wigan Springs Branch to run round again before returning north to access the sidings at Leyland, the whole journey booked to take around 9 hours! Although the train was 152 minutes late passing Hellifield en route to Blea Moor, arrears had been reduced to 83 minutes by this point and arrival at Leyland was just 5 minutes behind schedule.
Chris Powell
