This is the eastern end of sunny Plymouth North Road's platform seven with a rather uncared for 6990, Witherslack Hall acting as pilot to D604, probably on a Paddington bound working as I think 6990 was still allocated to Old Oak Common at this time. Use of steam coupled ahead of Diesel over the South Devon banks was frowned upon by those in authority as it was considered that the ingress of smoke and steam into the Diesels' air intakes would cause damage to the power units, but the rule was quite often broken, as we see here ! The apparently rather shiny looking Diesel seems to be getting some admiration from those on the platform, but this would have been early in its life, and I wonder whether Witherslack Hall is just assisting as far as Newton Abbot or whether it's working right through to Paddington. Happily, 6990 survived into preservation and is still with us today .