[Later. You may also enjoy this recent video of a Deltic hauling freight in the Scottish Highlands.]
It' s rather like finding a Derby winner pulling a milk float, but Dan Falchikov reports the welcome news that a preserved Deltic locomotive has been hired to haul commercial freight trains because of a shortage of locomotives.
Deltics hauled the express trains on the King's Cross to Edinburgh line in the 1960s and 1970s, though by the time I was a student at York they had been relegated to heading the stopping trains from there to London.
There was something very attractive about Deltics: that hunched, powerful shape and the throaty roar of their engines. People used to say that people would never mourn diesels they way they had the old steam locomotives, but I suspect the last days of the Deltics and the crowds they attracted formed the high-water mark of rail enthusiasm in Britain. Certainly, I spent their last evening in service (2 January 1982) beside the track near Little Bytham.
Dan has the video of a news report about the return of the Deltic and you can also see them in the opening titles of Get Carter...
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