Northern Belle – Settle & Carlisle Steam Tour – Departing: Crewe – Preston

As Featured on Channel 5’s World’s Most Scenic Railway Journeys

The Northern Belle will steam majestically off towards the spectacular 72-mile Settle-Carlisle line. Painstakingly hewn out of the North Pennine moors and Yorkshire Dales during the 1870s by an army of 6,000 navvies, this has been voted number two in a list of “The World’s 10 Greatest Train Journeys”.

“Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder, Shovelling white steam over her shoulder” (to quote W H Auden’s famous “Night Mail poem), we will race through picturesque Appleby before working hard to reach the top of Ais Gill (1,169ft, 356m). Then the Northern Belle drops down to Garsdale until eventually – “Snorting noisily as she passes, Silent miles of wind-bent grasses” – she steams into Settle.

On the way, we will have plunged through 14 tunnels, including the 1.5mile (2404m) long Blea Moor Tunnel, and crossed 22 viaducts, notably the magnificent 24-arch, quarter-mile (402m) long and 104ft (32m) high one at Ribblehead.

Finally, after reaching the pretty little town of Hellifield, we head west through Blackburn and back to Preston. Our trip may be over, but we will have memories to last a lifetime.

The journey will be steam hauled from Carnforth – Carlisle – Settle – Preston.

Heritage diesel locomotives will be used from the departure points and return.

Hauled by 6201 Princess Elizabeth – Carnforth – Carlisle – Settle – Preston

Pick up points – Crewe – Preston