Tornado saves the day

I thought I must give this a mention, this is such a brilliant story. Steam comes to the rescue and proves that it is a more reliable means of traction in the current cold conditions.

The text below was posted on the SEmG forum:

"Tornado rescues Southern commuters last night at Victoria
Posted by: "rog"
Tue Dec 22, 2009 11:12 am (PST)

Hello there and hope you are all well.

We were out with Tornado yesterday as you may know on the SR Kent coast lines, we were the ONLY train around in the area almost all day !

Saw a few Javelins, parked up, and a poorly Southeastern train being doubled headed by 2 x class 73's !
We had a slow run in the morning but in the evening as there were no electric trains around we had a good sprint!

When we got back to a snowy Victoria for the dinner run at 1745 we had about 100 commuters who were stranded at Victoria and couldn't get home to Kent on SE and SR trains. They came over to platform 2 to see that we were stopping at Bromley,Swanley and Maidstone, and as we were not full and took them on free of charge. They were very grateful and many said they never even normally get a seat !

Such fun, and some very happy converts to steam, albeit not a SR one but we all had a hoot.

Merry Xmas
Rog"

The BBC have the story at, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8428097.stm

Now that is what I call a Christmas special.......... What more an you say but fantastic.