Good Friday in London

[leslie10646]

I'm afraid the I dodged the Walk of Witness today to allow me to get to the Royal Albert Hall for the 149th Annual Good Friday performance of The Messiah.

First performance was  in DUBLIN in 1742

An Irish tenor among the soloists - the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra accompanied the Royal Choral Society who were on brilliant form - they raised the roof for all the "good bits". Despite a very cosmopolitan audience, 5,000 rose as one for the Hallelujah Chorus (they'd read about King George doing the same in the mid 1700s) and needed no cue! The rendering was marvellous.

So, what's the railway angle? On the way home, we found the GWR Paddington Band performing on the Lawn at Paddington. What's more, they were playing a bit of Ralph Vaughan Williams when I was taking this photo! 

We ended up running for the Didcot semi-fast with no less than a TWELVE car Class 387 (so preferable to the ghastly "IET" trains). Once out of the London area, we shot up to the Class's maximum speed of 110mph. These trains are honorary Irish as the GWR green livery is very similar to the RPSI and UTA green liveries.

Accurascale are doing the Electrostars, which include these Class 387 - but NOT yet, it appears. One would look lovely in a future Portadown?