December update (3)

Mainline steam again... Bath & Bristol Christmas Express, 7th December 

                                                            44871 at Bristol Temple Meads.

I received an early Christmas surprise a few weeks ago. My wife presented me with a booking for the Railway Touring Company’s steam hauled Bath & Bristol Christmas Express scheduled for 7^th December and hauled by ‘new build’ Peppercorn Pacific ‘Tornado’. A pick up and set down at Basingstoke meant that it was  easily doable, with no need for the early starts and late finishes that such trips can often entail.

Having travelled on mainline steam trips on and off for around forty odd years I can vouch for the fact that these things rarely go completely as planned. This one was no different with first the replacement of ‘Tornado’ with Black Five 44871 (Tornado having been withdrawn from service early for an overhaul) and then the change of the outbound pick up from Basingstoke to the water stop at Winchfield.

Much as a trip behind Tornado would have bene nice, I really didn’t mind the opportunity to get a decent run behind the Black Five. 44871 is not exactly a stranger when it comes to mainline trips, having previously travelled behind it on the West Highland line ‘Jacobite’ service in 2011 and on a railtour to Penzance in 2010 when it double headed with 70013 Oliver Cromwell. It certainly looked the part on a rake of West Coast Railway's maroon Mk1s and sounded great.

                                                 Ready for departure from Bristol TM in the early evening.

Britain was battered by Storm Barra on 7^th December and a tree down on the track near Warminster resulted in service disruptions with trains being held at Salisbury. We were held for some time at Laverstock Junction before crawling into the booked water stop in the city. We were held at platform four for some time, eventually getting away an hour behind schedule. 44871 put in a good performance for the run to Bath but of course there was no way to recover that sort of time and arrival at Bristol was still an hour adrift. Despite concerns about there being insufficient time to service the locomotive we were no more than a minute or two late leaving Bristol in the evening for the return leg and a splendid run was had back to Basingstoke arriving pretty much on time.

                        44871 departs Basingstoke on the run back to London Victoria in the evning.

It was wonderful to be back on the mainline behind steam traction again.

 

December update (2)

WNGM Open Day, 4th December

                                          Kerr Stuart diesel with a short coal train shunts the coal store siding.

Wessex Narrow Gauge Modellers (WNGM) staged  an open day at Colehill in Wimborne on Saturday 4^th December. These little members day type events are a particular trade mark of  009 Society area groups, being a lot less formal and much more light-hearted than a traditional exhibition. I was asked to attend, not with Ryedown Lane this time but with Wintoncester Water Works, the 009 micro that I built and exhibited in the early 2000s. This hasn’t been seen at an exhibition since Narrow Gauge South West in 2012, having had only a bit of use as a test track at WNGM monthly meetings in the intervening nine years.

Bagnall 0-4-0ST waits for its next duty.

A test session a few weeks beforehand revealed that Wintoncester was still in working condition, needing only a bit of a clean to prepare it for display. I also took the opportunity to do some minor scenic improvements by installing a couple of new trees and adding some static grass in a few key areas (static grass had not even made an appearance when the layout was first built).

I’ll do a blog post specifically about Wintoncester Water Works and its origins at a later date. For now, here are a few pictures of comings and goings on the day in question.

A little end of day light hearted fun (OK, silliness!) as two Mini Class 33's pose on Wintoncester Water Works.

 

December Update (1)

Ffestiniog Railway Bygones Weekend, October 8th - 10th 

Apologies for the lack of blog posts in recent months. It seems that with more and more events going on I have had less and less time to write about things let alone do very much in the way of modelling. By way of compensation, I’ll post about a few of the railway related things that I’ve done since the Farnham 009 Open Day in August.

In fact nothing much railway related happened at all until October when I ventured up to North Wales for the Ffestiniog Railway’s Bygone Weekend from the 8^th to 10^th.

                                        Prince at Porthmadog early on Saturday morning.

As with last year’s similar event, this was a scaled down, covid secure, version of the usual Autumn vintage weekend
with dedicated services to Tan y Bwlch, Blaenau Ffestiniog and also to Beddgelert on the Welsh Highland. The accompanying images show a little of what went on.

On the Sunday I joined the special inspection train for Diamond Jubilee Appeal supporters. An early start from Porthmadog saw the train hauled by Upnor Castle as far as Boston Lodge, where were able to see the latest developments, inspect the nearly completed New Large Carriage Shed and hear the news that the railway’s bid to the National Lottery heritage Fund had been successful.

Lyd with Supporters train at Boston Lodge.

On leaving Boston Lodge the train, now hauled by Lyd took us first to Blaenau then back down the line to a stop at the south end of the Moelwyn Tunnel. Here we detrained to attend the official dedication ceremony to mark the completion of the new stone portals for the tunnel. Effectively this ceremony, performed by FR president Mike Schuman and local MP Liz Saville-Roberts, also marked the completion of the deviation project of the late 1960s and 1970s. Reading about the exploits of the deviationists as I was growing up in the 1970s I could never have imagined that I might one day be present at an event to mark the completion of the project.

                                                    Dedication ceremony at Moelwyn Tunnel.

The train then ran to Beddgelert, pausing briefly at Pen Cob to swap the motive power for NG/G16 No 87. A really enjoyable and memorable weekend.

NG/G16 87 at Beddgelert with the Supporters train.