Made a spur of the moment decision to get to Tamworth and ride the service to Derby - very enjoyable. Busy with enthusiasts of course, but when I got on plenty of spare seats and in fact where a couple of empty tables for four in the carriage I boarded.
I have to say I was unimpressed by the volume of litter and empty bottles / overflowing bins on board, plus left on tables (not sure why people who like railways think that other people want to sit with their litter...), but to their credit in the Burton area an XC staff member - lanyard but not uniformed, came down collecting rubbish which of course improved things considerably, so thanks to that chap.
Really glad I made albeit a short run. Would have been nice to have joined it in daylight in the southwest of course.
Good atmosphere on board the carriage I was in, and no sign of incident reported earlier up thread having any lasting impact.
I noted at Tamworth security staff had been employed on the platform to keep people behind the yellow platform line, so I assume XC had paid for this due to concerns about possible behaviour issues, and announcements about enthusiasts needing to behave, which all seemed OTT given no apparent issue that I saw at the station. Might have been better for XC to have employed a few more people to litter pick the train and 'steward it' instead, if they were concerned.
The regular announcements on board pointed out the nature of the occasion in suitable style, so very well done to the crew who were staffing the train this evening.
Very much the end of an era.
Not to mention a daft decision to withdraw these expensively upgraded trains...