Emoji Engines at the Eastleigh Lakeside Railway's 'OVER TO YOU GALA' - June 2023

After six weeks of voting on social media, the Eastleigh Lakeside Railway held a brand-new themed event on the weekend of Saturday 24th & Sunday 25th June 2023. The event was titled 'OVER TO YOU GALA' where through a series of votes on Facebook, the railway asked the general public (as well as the volunteers) what locomotives they would like to see from a series of several categories. These were achieved by using the Facebook Emoji buttons. The seven locomotives that got chosen were as follows... - 12-Coach Engines: SR rebuilt 'Merchant Navy'-class 4-6-2 No.35004 "Cunard White Star", GCR 8K-class 2-8-0 No.102 & SBCR 2000-class 'Bullock' 4-6-2 No.2011 "Coronation" - 9-Coach Engines: LNER A4-class 4-6-2 No.4498 "Sir Nigel Gresley" & LBSCR 'Atlantic' 4-4-2 No.1908 "Ernest Henry Upton" - Diesel Engine: RVM 6w P-H No.D2000 "Thunderbolt" - Small Engine: 'Romulus' 0-4-0 "Sanjo" Coaching sets included three main sets and the return of the Monks Brook Shuttle which ran empty to Monks Brook Halt and would then bring passengers back. The Special Trains that ran once again included the Breakfast Specials first thing in the mornings with a 'LAKES EXPRESS' with "Cunard White Star" on the Saturday and a Parallel Run with "Sir Nigel Gresley" & 102 on the Sunday. A new service was run Saturday lunchtime appropriately titled the 'LUNCHTIME LIMITED' which was a two-lap non-stop express starting and ending in Platform 3 and hauled by "Sir Nigel Gresley" whilst the finale of the event was a quintuple-header non-stop Mega-Train hauled by "Sir Nigel Gresley", 102, "Cunard White Star", "Ernest Henry Upton" & "Coronation". The sequences in this video are as follows... - 102 & "Sir Nigel Gresley": Sets A & B (Parallel Run) - 102: Set A - "Cunard White Star": Set A (including 'LAKES EXPRESS') - "Coronation": Set B - "Ernest Henry Upton": Set C - "Sir Nigel Gresley": Set B ('LUNCHTIME LIMITED') - "Thunderbolt": Monks Brook Shuttle - "Sanjo": Monks Brook Shuttle - "Cunard White Star": Set B - 102: Set B - "Coronation": Set C - "Sir Nigel Gresley"-"Ernest Henry Upton": Set A - "Ernest Henry Upton"-"Coronation": Set A - "Thunderbolt": Set C - "Sir Nigel Gresley"-102-"Cunard White Star"-"Ernest Henry Upton"-"Coronation": Sets A & B (Multi-Header Mega-Train) Filmed over both days of the event. Special thanks to RailroadBecca and @generations113 for their assistance in filming this. Like - Comment - Subscribe Stay safe and have a good evening.