West Somerset Spring Gala (3)

It's taken until late March to finally get started on my 50 at 50 odyssey but this was a grand trip with which to begin it. My Dad has been a railway nut since he was a kid. He was brought up in Birmingham and lived close to the GWR and LMS lines heading north so he saw all the great steam locos from that era, including the Licky Banker¹ and since he retired he spends a lot of time going to preservation lines, especially to galas.

The West Somerset is a particular favourite line of his. It has a good selection of GWR locos and a decent length of track, running from just outside Taunton down to the coast at Watchett and then along to Minehead. He's also done two train driving courses there.

Dad proudly standing in front of SDJR No 88 which he had just driven

Anyway the West Somerset Spring Gala seemed like a good place to begin and an opportunity to do something with Dad on his own, which is a rare treat.

So I set off from my home station of Waterbeach on Friday morning. After an uneventful journey down to London the tube provided the first encounter that makes travelling by train so much more interesting than by car.

It started when the bloke standing opposite asked where I was from. It turned out that the khaki combats and Tilley hat had fooled him into thinking I was from Australia so I think my reply of "Cambridge" disappointed him but it got us talking and I discovered an interesting bit of railway knowledge as a result.

He was a bloke with multiple jobs but one of them was delivering second hand lorries from Bristol, where he lived, to the ports for them to be sent off to Africa. His responsibility ended at the port, typically somewhere like Sheerness, Grimsby, or Newcastle. So he then had to get home, which he did by train. Now his problem was that he didn't know in advance when he was going so couldn't buy an Advance ticket (which give syou a considerable saving - I'm using them a lot this year). That meant he got screwed on train fares.

But he'd solved this problem, and rather elegantly. He was paying £32, regardless of where in the UK he started (for comparison today it would cost around £82 for an Off Peak and £94 for an Anytime ticket from here to Bristol). And he could do that at no notice too.

How? Well by buying a Stena Line Rail & Sail ticket to Rosslaire from Fishguard. The most expensive price for that, for most of the UK, is £32. So he bought the ticket and went via Bristol (which is the obvious route). When he got to Bristol he got off and, if asked, said he was "breaking his journey" which is allowed with train journeys. And then he threw his ticket away. Cute.

Anyway we got to Paddington and went our separate ways. I hopped in the train direct to Taunton. I'd booked a first class ticket. Being the size I am I do like first class² as it gives me enough leg room, although the leather (or probably faux leather) seats on this train weren't as nice as the seats on the East Coast Main Line trains, which remains my favourite train journey (and which I'll be doing several times later this year so more on that then).

I'd arranged to meet Dad on Taunton station platform. In fact we travelled there on the same train, he got on at Reading, but while I was up in first class he was in standard class so it wasn't until I got off at Taunton that I spied him waiting near the platform exit. We wandered down to pick up the free bus to Bishops Lydeard which is the first station on the line. After a cup of tea at the station café he left me to take the regular bus to Minehead (waving his "I'm an old age pensioner" card which gets him on for free) while I took my first trip on a steam hauled train.

West Country Class 34046 "Braunton" getting ready to take me down the line

And that was the start of two days of steam railway fun. You can find lots of photos of the locos in this album so I'm not going to dwell on it here too much. If you like steam trains you'll want to drool over the pictures, otherwise probably not. One photo I was pleased with was this one:

People heading up the platform to see 6024 "King Edward I", a GWR King

It came out almost black and white, without any post processing, which I thought worked rather well.

Although for Dad this was, as ever, a big nostalgia trip for me steam trains on the main line are just a dim memory. When I was a nipper there was still some steam running up and down the main line through Fleet where we lived and I can vaguely remember standing on the bridge as one went by underneath and the world disappearing in smoke and steam but the days of steam were already numbered. I remember an early train journey to up to Waterloo and being disappointed that it was a 4 coach EMU³ rather than being steam hauled.

So although I love seeing steam trains it doesn't really set off memories like it clearly does for Dad. Strangely however something else did. It was the carriages. I used to travel up to Cambridge on the Intercity (now there's word we've lost) train from Liverpool Street⁴. The rolling stock was exactly like these carriages: all wood panelling with not very comfortable seats, and divisions within the carriage to split it into smoking and non-smoking sections.

Anyway we had fun going up and down the line, watching them turn an engine around on the turntable, and wandering around the sheds. We got to go on the footplate of their standby engine and chat to the driver. And we drank a lot of tea, as is the way whenever Dad and I meet.

Late on Saturday afternoon we headed for home. We took the train back to Reading, both first class this time with him travelling as my carer on my disabled railcard much to my amusement. Then another train cross country down to Basingstoke and finally a short hop up to Fleet where we walked back to my parents' house for a light supper.

Sunday morning my sister picked me up and I went back to her house for lunch with them. Of course I had to help my nephew sort out his Linux boxes first but that's the fun of being an uncle.

Which only left a pretty uneventful journey home from Hook. The small complication was that engineering works on the Kings Cross line meant I had to go via Liverpool Street and the "all stopper" to Cambridge but that was the quickest way and I did just have time to pick up a hot croissant full of ham and melted cheese on Liverpool Street station as I ran for the train. Diet? What diet?

1. The Licky Banker aka "Big Bertha" was a very powerful one off 0-10-0 loco designed especially to push ("bank") trains up the Lickey Incline, the steepest sustained main line railway incline in the country.
2. Little note to self: the power sockets in first on these trains are above the table. This is a Bad Plan as if you're using a wall wart like my Nokia phone charger it needs some space below it if it's going to be plugged in. I wasn't the only one caught out by this. The woman opposite couldn't get her laptop charged.
3. Electric Motor Unit, i.e. four coaches powered by electricity, and third rail rather than overhead as this was an old Southern Railway line.
4. In those days the train from Kings Cross was the poor relation and you had to change, usually at Royston, so it wasn't the preferred route - unlike now.