Swindon Built - Fifty Shades of Green (Part 3)

You might be forgiven for thinking that organising a gala is a bit like being a kid in a sweet shop, select your favourite few locos as guests and off you go.  Unsolicited advice on which locos to get, or indeed not to get is always in plentiful supply and rest assured that there was absolutely no chance at all of pleasing everybody.  The reality is that out of the several hundreds of preserved steam locos out there, your starter for ten is that it has to be in ticket, so forget about Mallard, Duchess of Hamilton or King George V.   It would also need to have the power & water capacity to haul a rake of seven BR mk1's along our line.  Unfortunately that rules out amongst many other things, those rather wonderful Beattie well tanks, which would need in-flight refuelling as well as a banking engine.  To all intents and purposes, any mainline registered locos are going to turn out to be unavailable to us, as the loco would need to be re-weighed before it could return to mainline use, and many owners of large locos don't like them going on the backs of low-loaders anyway (please don't view that as a suggestion that we should try for a mainline connection at Honeybourne or elsewhere, the issue is far more complicated than that and there is no time to go into it here).  The source railway needs to have enough steam locos available to cover its own needs and of course the owners (not usually the source railway) need to agree to the hire.  This is before the ever present "railway politics" rears its ugly head.  The reality is, that you're not so much a "kid in a sweet shop", but a tired old chap fishing in a fairly small pool.  If you can come up with enough interesting locos and hopefully get them to tie in with some sort of a theme, then you're doing well. 

In the end, I personally think that we came up with a fairly pleasing selection of locos. The theme "Swindon Built" was both very appropriate for an ex-GWR main line like ours and left a reasonably sized pool of locos to fish in.  Being able to have the youngest and oldest working locos (92214 & 2807 respectively) that fitted the theme was good.  Being able to tick off at least one loco designed by each of the possible CME's that managed Swindon works, Churchward (2807 & 4270), Collett (7812 & 7820), Hawksworth (7903) & Riddles (92214) was even better.  We even managed to get one of the non GWR/BR designed locos that was built at Swindon in the shape of Ivatt, 2MT, 46521.   I accept the argument that a Swindon built 4 cylinder loco would have been the icing on the cake, but, for several of the reasons mentioned in the first paragraph, that wasn't at all likely.  Every gala has to have an exception to its theme, and ours was a big green three cylindered exception, which I was privileged enough to fire on the afternoon of the last day (Monday 30th) of the gala.

An afternoon start on the Monday, with a late finish meant that I couldn't sign on too early, without risking going over my hours.  I took full advantage of this glorious state of affairs and enjoyed what passed for a bit of a lie-in.  One of the gala committee was unfortunately detained elsewhere for family reasons, and I wound up covering the start of his gala control shift from about 09:00.  By the Monday, most of the issues had been dealt with and the gala was running like a well oiled machine, so in reality there was little to do.   I started off by joining Bill in the signal box for a while, George & Tina appeared shortly after that with 4270 and some tea.

George and Tina, waiting to take 4270 onto its train

 Speaking of Tina, this coming weekend is when she starts her sponsored 40 mile walk in 24 hours along part of the Cotswold Way.  Feel free to point your web browsers and credit cards here to sponsor her for the benefit of Action Medical Research for Children.

A little later, George, Tina & 4270 were back again, along with Erlestoke Manor:

Bill gets ready as 4270 & 7812 approach...

...and hands the token over to Chris on Erlestoke Manor.

Waiting to depart with the freight train was 7903, Foremarke Hall and a few of the team that have worked incredibly hard to get her ready for the gala.  Many thanks to all involved in getting her ready in time.

(l-r), Aaron, John, John, Steve & Will.

Shortly afterwards, Dinmore Manor turned up to join in.

We had intended to set up some sort of a goods cameo in the car park, with a few wagons, and a truck, with some sort of a load and perhaps a few dummies set out shifting stuff.  In the end we wound up with a few wagons and a diesel shunter, with a suitable lorry parked some distance away.  One of the few items that didn't quite work out entirely as planned.

The 04 and a few wagons still looked nice in the car park though

The trade stand marquee was once again a popular attraction at Toddington, Dinmore Manor Locomotive LTD and the 2874 Trust both making the most of the opportunity and placing adverts outside the marquee as well as inside.

Lord Kitchener style advert for the 2874 Trust, featuring John & Tina.

Tina was even captured for posterity stood by the advert (photo courtesy of Chris Ardy)

Dinmore Manor Locomotive LTD also had a neat advert for 3850's restoration appeal, using a photo that I think is one that I took back in March, which has had a helicopter Photoshopped onto the image.

Club 3850, flying high

My rostered turn was to be on 35006, taking over the loco at Cheltenham Race Course (CRC) at 13:00.  I travelled down to CRC in the brake, which was the leading carriage of the train.  There were a handful of passengers stood up in there as well.  I was keen to do a little market research, so I asked them all what the main attractions for this year's gala was for them.  The common theme that soon emerged was that they were all there for a variety of reasons, but 35006 was the top of the pile.  At that point, the penny dropped, I was asking a small sample of people in a carriage that was directly behind 35006.  Had I asked the same question in any other carriage directly behind any other loco, I'd have probably come up with very different answers.  Dangerous stuff this market research.   

Once aboard 35006, we were soon on our way:

35006, leaving CRC

Crossing Erlestoke Manor at Gotherington

Arriving at Winchcombe

The timetable for this turn was not for the faint-hearted.  The brief was, pick up 35006 at CRC, and fetch it up to Winchcombe.  So far, so good.  We now had to uncouple from our train and sit in the bay platform for one hour and forty minutes.  Bear in mind that 35006 is a long parallel boilered loco and the line drops dramatically as you enter Greet tunnel just before Winchcombe, which dictates that you have to have the water well up the glass, or risk exposing the crown of the firebox. The upshot is of course that you arrive with not much water space to play with.  Once you have kept it quiet for an hour and forty minutes, you then have to resurrect the fire (at this stage 35006 only had one rake in its tool tunnel and that only reached half way down the firebox), run light engine to Toddington, where you had to wait for another hour before being dragged down to Laverton.  Then, and only then are you able to use up any steam, by pulling the train for a round trip of the line.  Something of a test in boiler control for any fireman!

There was also no rake in the tender for pulling coal forward, my one hour and forty minutes at Winchcombe was mostly spent in the tender with a shovel, shifting coal forward.

I pilfered something that would stand in for a rake when we got to Toddington

Neil had his hand on the big red handle, he seemed to be having a good day.

Steve (l) acted as owner's rep for the day

As you might expect, I have received many dozens of photos from other people over the gala, not all of which could be included (many thanks for sending them anyway), but in the rush to get the last two posts out, I managed to overlook a photo from Steve, of the crew of 35006 on the Saturday morning of the gala. This being the first fare paying passenger train that 35006 had hauled in preservation made it something of a momentous event.  Here is that crew:

Andy (l) and Chris on Saturday morning on 35006. photo courtesy of Steve Parker

 The following three photos were kindly provided by Peter Young:

4270 & Erlestoke Manor, arriving at Winchcombe, shortly after I had seen them passing Toddington signal box

Dinmore Manor arriving at Winchcombe

35006 arriving at Winchcombe in the morning, before my turn started.

 The following two photos were kindly provided by Chris Ardy:

Foremarke Hall and 2807

A pleasing study of Dinmore Manor, with 35006 setting off with a train at Toddington

Finally, back at Toddington, we returned with the last train of the gala and therefore, ours was the last loco to be disposed.  I was more than a little grateful by this point that a team of cleaners had been rostered each day to assist with disposal duties, many thanks to all concerned.

Disposal crew at work

I still had to wander around the loco and check that everything was as it should be...

...nothing amiss in the smoke box

There is a long list of people to thank; the Great Central Railway for the hire of 92214 & 46521, and the Severn Valley Railway and the Erlestoke Manor Fund for the hire of 7812, Erlestoke Manor, along with the owners' representatives who came with them.  The owning groups of all the home fleet, with particular thanks to John Cruxon and his team of volunteers who pulled out all the stops to get 7903, Foremarke Hall running in time. The excellent team behind the scenes in organising this year's gala were (in alphabetical order) Andy Beale (who also came up with the "Fifty Shades of Green" title for this series of posts), Chris Blake, Ian Crowder, James Edwards, Ben Evason, Graham Radband, Paul Richardson & Ade Showell.   Thank you to all the staff/volunteers at the GWSR who helped in any capacity, both before during and after the gala.  Getting a nice selection of locos together is one thing, but they need maintenance, crews, carriages to pull, track to put them on (which also needs drainage & line side clearance), signalling & signalmen, guards, travelling ticket inspectors, on train catering, off train catering, booking office clerks, station masters, well maintained buildings/stations, crossing monitors, car park attendants as well as the admin and organisational/managerial people required to make the railway work.  Yes, it's very much a team effort making a gala happen. I'm always conscious of the fact that "Behind every good man is a good woman", so many thanks to all the wives and girlfriends who let their men out
to play.  That works in reverse too, we have many lady volunteers, so many thanks as well to their other halves.  Many thanks along with my apologies to all those that I may have inadvertently missed out. Finally, thank you to everybody who came along and supported the event, we'd have all looked a bit silly if you hadn't turned up.  
Now what on earth are we going to do next year?  Watch this space.