With a little bit of snow still lying on the ground, 50037 Illustrious approaches Grintleyhill Bridge, Combe on 31 January 1987 with the 1A18 07:00 Hereford to Paddington 'Cathedrals Express'. Unlike so many trains on the Cotswold Line twenty years later under the aegis of private operator First Great Western, this train, like the majority of the loco hauled trains I photographed on the line in the 1980s was running exactly to time. Admittedly this long section of single line doesn't help when things go wrong, but it is not in itself a cause of late running as First Great Western would have us believe.