I made a 546-mile round trip from Oxford to Carlisle last Thursday, rising for the purpose at 4am and returning home just before midnight. This was a major effort, given that my sole activity in that Cumbrian city came in the purchase and consumption of a large Hendrick’s gin and tonic and a cheese panini in a branch of JD Wetherspoon (the William Rufus, since you ask).

The pictures on this page reveal that this was actually a trip on which the journey and not the arrival mattered. It was made with Steam Dreams and The Cathedrals Express, with our train hauled for most of the way by a ‘heritage diesel’, class 47 No 47237. Built by Brush exactly 50 years ago, it could have been one of the many members of the class I saw as a teenage trainspotter, making its pioneer journey, fresh from the workshops, ‘on trial’ through my home town of Peterborough.

At Carnforth, the locomotive handed over to steam haulage supplied by the gleaming red Jubilee class 4-6-0, No 45699, Galatea. Built at Crewe in 1936, to the design of Sir William Stanier, this handsome engine disappeared from British Railways metals in 1964 precisely as 47237 arrived. Having languished in Barry Island scrapyard for years, it was returned to active life by the West Coast Railway Company last year.

Had I seen this locomotive in its BR days? I think not, although until 1964 — that date again — when the Peterborough to Northampton railway line closed — I had regularly travelled along it to Wellingborough, where a pounding Jubilee, leaning into the station curve at 80mph or more, was a never-to-be-forgotten sight — and, indeed, sound.

The spectacle of a ‘Jube’ in full cry was what drew so many to the lineside, cameras at the ready, last Thursday (though 47237 clearly had its admirers too). Not for the first time on a steam jaunt, I rather wished that I had been out there in the sunshine with them.

How I should love to have seen Galatea battling with its load of 11 coaches, plus the weight of the ‘dead’ diesel at the rear, on the notoriously gruelling ascent to Shap on the West Coast main line.

This was on the outward journey. At Carlisle, a gentleman from Charlbury — one of eight or nine Oxford Times readers I met during the day — expressed his suspicion that 47237 had not been dead at all. Could so impressive a pace have been maintained without help? Turning detective, Rosemarie asked the Jubilee’s driver. Galatea had definitely done it alone, he said, though he did not deny that the 47 would have been ready with a shove had this proved necessary.

Our return journey took us over the Settle and Carlisle line, widely regarded as the most beautiful in England. (The West Highland line is judged to hold the British title.) Once again a famous summit, that of Ais Gill (1,169ft), attracted spectators in great number. So too, soon after, did the spectacle of a steam train crossing Ribblehead Viaduct, whose 440-yard, 24-arch construction involved the labour of 2,000 navvies over four years. More than 100 of them died there.

By then, I had had ample evidence of the beauty of the landscape in the jaw-dropping view from my seat on the train. Moors and mountains were laid out before me, such was the direction of the wind, beneath a curtain of smoke from the chimney of hard-working Galatea. One thought of W.H. Auden and his evocative poem Night Mail: “Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder/ Shovelling white steam over her shoulder.” (Only ours was grey.) Since my seat was in Pullman class, the feasting was not confined to visuals. Northbound we had a breakfast lasting three hours, from first cups of coffee, through croissants, fruit compote and yoghurt, porridge and ‘full English’. Dinner on return was no less drawn out: canapés in three varieties, amuse bouche of butternut squash soup, heritage tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella starter, main course of pancetta-wrapped guinea fowl with sweet potatoes, petit pois and wilted chard, summer pudding and clotted cream, three wonderful cheeses (Barkham blue, taleggio and brie) and finally coffee with biscotti and macarons.

You know, I didn’t really need that Wetherspoon panini. But the journey was worth it . . .