Misplaiced

Ben (the roster clerk) had long since apologised for putting me down for a fireman training turn on Thomas.  Apparently the only available dates that worked for all concerned in September were for the 21st, so that's what I ended up with.  Not that I mind Thomas events, they can be quite fun, but I'd be pitched into trying to fire a strange (to me at least) and rather small loco in a timetable that included three extended stays at Winchcombe of nearly an hour.  Using my 'skill and judgement'  I would need to get Thomas up to steam in the morning and be ready to haul seven carriages (Annie, Clarabel and presumably five of their friends) the short distance to Winchcombe and upon arrival, layover for the best part of an hour entertaining hordes of screaming kids before returning back.  From a boiler control perspective, this was asking a fair bit if I was to arrive and keep Thomas from blowing off whilst there.  Quite a number of small children proved to be startled by Thomas' whistle, they'd have been terrified by the noise from the safety valves if they had lifted. To make matters worse, children would be expecting to come up on the footplate and feed Thomas 'coal cakes' (lumps of coal on a paper plate). Exactly the last thing you need if you're trying to keep from blowing off. I wasn't really expecting this to go well.   Ian Chilton had let me know that he was down for crossing monitor duty at Winchcombe in the morning.  He would be switching his hearing aids off so that he didn't have to listen to either the Thomas music being piped around the platforms or the roar of Thomas' safety valves.  He would also be taking pictures of me and of Thomas blowing off and then hack into this blog to display them to the world.  Not being a complete idiot I keep the password to myself (well OK, give or take the NSA, GCHQ and anybody else that Google thinks might like to know).

Things didn't start off too well:

Thomas eats his driver

We had to grab hold of Paul's boots and yank him back out.  During Thomas events. all operational staff are supposed to wear a 'Friend of Thomas' badge on their clothes to identify themselves as being members of staff. I won't embarrass the person concerned by naming him, but he put the pointy bit of the safety pin on the back of the badge in just a bit too far and exclaimed "Ouch, I've just pierced my nipple!". As you can imagine, sympathy was in short supply and those present laughed. On the plus side though, we were under instructions from the owner not to remove Thomas' face to empty out the smoke box throughout the whole weekend.  I didn't need any second bidding on that one.

Getting ready to play, Thomas and Henry, the big green engine

Henry was off shed first and seemed to be rather enthusiastic about getting on with the day's work:

Foremarke Hall Henry steams into action

Apparently Henry was once bricked up in a tunnel by the Fat Controller for refusing to pull trains in the rain.  Henry wasn't taking any chances of getting bricked up in Greet tunnel this time and stormed off down the track regardless of the weather forecast. I daresay that in these more enlightened times, punishments such as being bricked up in a tunnel would be regarded as being a step too far and Social Services would be down on you like a ton of bricks.  As it turned out the weather stayed fine and dry all day anyway, so Henry was spared from being bricked up in Greet tunnel and as a consequence, the Fat Controller wasn't carted off to jail.  That would have put a bit of a crimp in the day's proceedings.

After a short while, we too were on our way down to Winchcombe with a full complement of seven carriages.  We established that Thomas starts blowing off light, 160 psi rather than the 170 psi marked by the red line on the pressure gauge and that she starts to struggle to hold the brakes off at 120 psi.  The trick therefore was to try and keep her somewhere in the 140 to 150 psi range if at all possible.  We also noticed that her exhaust had quite a pleasant bark to it as she had to work a bit to pull seven coaches. Sean has emailed me a sound recording that he made on one of the trips of the sound of my hard shoveling going up the chimney. At least it was going out the chimney rather than out the safety valves.  I think Sean was disappointed with that.  Other things of note are the cab was tiny, not that you needed to swing the shovel far, but hitting the front of the grate without clouting your hand on the bunker in the process was an achievement.  I'd probably have been better advised to have just thrown a few lumps in by hand every now and again.

Upon arrival at Winchcombe, Thomas was of course the star attraction.  Hordes of kids descended on us and queued up to get on the footplate.  One or two of them even queued patiently.  Most seemed to be happy to just have their photo taken, some were just a bit frightened and others were keen to know how you made Thomas go.  Next it was back up the platform a bit for the infamous routine of catching the fish in the water tank.  The Fat Controller was supposed to interrogate Thomas' driver and establish that Thomas wasn't feeling too well, then ask if he'd stopped to take water in the brook. The driver would confess that they had and Thomas' water tanks would then be inspected, a fish found and removed.   The only problem was, that nobody knew where the fish was.  We had misplaced the plaice. We secretly suspected that the Fat Controller had eaten it for his breakfast.  Anyway, it was game over on that, so we did a bit of getting the kids to fetch buckets of water up to Thomas to refill his tanks with. I was stitched up with doing the first lot of filling the water tanks, however Ade did it on one of the later trips.

Ade filling Thomas' water tanks the hard way

Unsurprisingly it turns out to be far more efficient to fill Thomas' tanks using one of our water cranes, so that's what we did later at Toddington.

Ade looks rather more relaxed filling Thomas this way

And so the day progressed, wandering back and forth between Toddington and Winchcombe and being besieged by countless Thomas fans. Eventually the errant fish was found and strategically set up in Thomas' water tank.  The Fat Controller and the driver had their conversation and I was sent off to discover and remove the fish.

The Fat Controller

I dutifully set off, found the fish and extricated it using the fishing rod that was attached to it.  Once it was out, I heard a young lad's voice from somewhere in the crowd say "That's not real".  I was berated later by Paul for not having acted out the angling part convincingly.  Phrases such as 'method acting' were employed.  Later on whilst we were waiting in a siding for our stock to arrive back in the platform, Paul demonstrated how it should be done:

Paul demonstrates how to catch a fake fish convincingly

Paul was also quite keen to cook the fish on the shovel, but was eventually persuaded that it wouldn't be a good idea. and later on it was popped back into the brook where it came from.  No fish were harmed in the making of this blog.

Henry runs round her stock at Winchcombe

A diesel arrives with our stock

The diesels were running without faces.  Usually they're supposed to have a face at each end rather like <insert name of your least favourite politician here> however on this occasion, for contractual reasons they didn't.  Hopefully by the next time that Thomas pays us a visit the diesels will be running in their two faced glory once again.

My great niece and three great nephews were in attendance too.  They all enjoyed their day out with Thomas, though one of my great nephews was a little disappointed that Thomas couldn't take them all the way home to Severn Tunnel Junction.  Come to that, the crew were a bit disappointed too.

There was one other item of note from the day, a young couple had chosen Saturday to get married and to have the event hosted on our railway.  Apparently they were informed when they booked that they would clash with the Thomas weekend, but that didn't seem to deter them.  Well it won't be something that they'll forget in a hurry. 

Thomas and the happy couple

White of course is not really the colour of choice to wear in the presence of steam locomotives, but the bride seems to have got away with it thus far.  It will have been hard work to keep her dress clean throughout the whole day though.

And finally, several of the dad's asked questions about Thomas. What kind of engine was she?  Was she a patriot? Well even I knew enough about her to know that she wasn't a patriot, but I could do little more than point to the makers plate on the cabside and say that she was an industrial Hunslett 0-6-0T from 1937:

Thomas' worksplate

I decided when I got home to do a bit of detective work and find out more about Thomas.  Well as it turns out, Thomas is only Thomas (0-6-0T) at weekends, the rest of the time he is not a 'he', but a 'she' 0-6-0ST by the name of Jessie. You read it here first! The rev A.W. Awdry will be positively spinning in his grave.