The Great Central Railway has announced the final guest locomotive for its Spring Diesel Gala later this month.

The Leicestershire heritage railway has revealed that Class 26 loco number 26043 will appear at the gala, which will take place from Friday 24 until Sunday 26 April.

The locomotive has experience as a guest at diesel galas, having taken part in the Chinnor and Princes Risborough Railway diesel gala earlier this year. In the run-up to that event, the Railway used the locomotive for driver experiences.

Locomotive 26043 is able to take part in the gala thanks to the Cotswold Mainline Diesel Group and Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Steam Railway.

The other guest locos at the gala will be Class 35 D7018 and Class 14 D9525, with the railway’s home fleet also in operation.

Within the next few days, the railway will release more details about the weekend event, including timetables, cab passes and brake van rides.

Further information and tickets are available from this web page.

The Great Central Railway regularly holds diesel galas and attracted thousands of visitors to its 2023 event.

British Rail Class 26 were manufactured by the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company (BRCW) at Smethwick in the West Midlands in 1958–59, and as a result, were also known as the BRCW Type 2. This was at a time when British Rail was carrying out its Modernisation Plan, and needed small diesel locomotives.

BRCW built 47 Class 26 locomotives. They worked until 1994, when the class was withdrawn from service. Class 26 locos had all-steel bodies, and their cab ends had fibreglass cab roofs.

The Great Central Railway is located in Leicestershire, in the East Midlands of England. It takes its name from the company that originally built the eight-mile stretch of railway that it runs along.

Each of its four stations is restored to a particular period in the railway’s history. Loughborough Central is in 1950s style, Quorn & Woodhouse in the style of the Second World War and the 1940s, Rothley as it would have been in the Edwardian Era, and Leicester North in the style of the 1960s.