You wait ages for one

...then three come along at once.

On sunday the local football club Glossop North End played in the FA Vase final at Wembley Stadium. The club managed to get a charter train to take 700 fans there and back for the day out.
I was expecting the train to have a loco at each end, which it did (class 47s) but also at the back there was a third loco, a class 57 liveried in the Virgin Trains Thunderbird loco - I have heard the train ran all the way to Manchester picadilly and then reversed so it was double headed down to London.
So here are some pictures of the first loco working out of Glossop in a very long time (back in December a railtour took a couple of locos up to Hadfield and back to Manchester, so the viaduct has had loco hauled stock over it in the last 6 months).

47826 at the front of the working



47786 Roy Castle OBE almost at the rear of the train



57308 Tin Tin at the back



Heading out over the viaduct



Those are probably the first and last locos to work a passenger service from and to Glossop in a long time

Digging

Well there are now things planted.
The only problem with planting stuff on a virgin site is all the digging that goes along with it. We have three trenches of potatoes in and a bed with some onion sets. The trenches for the spuds are about 40-50cm wide by about 4m long and are down about a foot deep. The onion bed was dug over about 130cm wide by 4m long and then had the sets put in. I've also dug another similar sized bed but need to work it over again with a fork and rake before it can be used for planting.

For a gardener who is very much of the no dig school, this is quite a lot of digging!

We need to work out where to put the shed as we've had a word with a neighbor who is getting rid of a small shed and they've said we can have it. When we do get that up it will make life a bit easier as we won't be having to carry all the tools down through the village from the house to the plot.