FIRST DIRECT TRAIN FROM BRIGG TO BONNY SCOTLAND IN 170 YEARS

 

The iconic railway line through Brigg - opened in the late 1840s - recently scored a first.
These pictures - sent to Brigg Blog by a surprised member of the public - show a diesel unit carrying a destination board for Dumfries, in Scotland, as it passed through our station.
Decades ago, Manchester was as far as you could travel from Brigg without changing trains, but Sheffield later gained that distinction.
As you may have guessed by now, things are not quite what they seem.
The Dumfries display either reflects some railway worker's sense of humour or the unit had been working north of the border and no-one altered the destination once it was redeployed to Yorkshire.
The Dumfries-bound train was not in revenue-earning service but being used for driver training along the Brigg line.
The sparse Saturday-only passenger service between Sheffield and Cleethorpes - via Kirton Lindsey, Brigg and Barnetby - is still being disrupted by a long-running dispute relating to guards on trains operated by the Northern company.
It's a shame that no-one was able to board the train on the Brigg line and take a trip to Dumfries; like Brigg it's an historic market town. Read more here...
Brigg Blog's thanks are extended to the person who emailed the images.
Wishing to remain anonymous, he asked: "Could this be a secret Northern project to corner the commuter market between Brigg and Scotland?
"I thought your readers might find it amusing, so when the train returned from Cleethorpes (15:45 at Brigg) I went out and snapped the attached pictures."