11-12 June was the station festival, to commemorate 150 years since there was a licensed bar on the site.
Saturday was great - good weather, lots to see. Sunday we had washout with constant heavy rain and the consequent absence of visitors.
In the yard we had the PW 6-ton steam crane doing lifting demos. Catch Me Who Can was in steam and so operating albeit stationary.
Platform 2 had a display of brilliant miniature stationary engines, courtesy of Charlotte's parents, and they (the engines) included many weird and wonderful movements of which the more you looked at them, the more you wondered how they actually managed to do what they did! Charlotte's dad (must get his name!) was more than willing to explain how each worked, plus a little history of what they would have been used for. We'll follow up on this with a separate post.
On the car park there was a huge display, with running tracks, from the fab Wolverhampton Model Engineering Society, with a range of five and seven-and-a-quarter inch gauge live steam locos, going back and forth along the portable track, and giving rides to lots of VERY happy visitors. That's when they could get the SVR volunteers off(!)
Amongst the display were several narrow gauge representations, a GW 2-6-0 mogul, and two 14xx's, and a five-inch Canadian 4-4-0 tender engine. There was also a working representation in green livery of our own saddle tank 1501, which gave a great idea of what ours will look like finished.
Certain MPD staff were hard to prise off the locos, and the whole display certainly drew the crowds, visitor and staff!
Sadly, Sunday was an absolute wash-out. After bringing the velocipede on-track from Eardington, it unfortunately spent the day in the carriage siding unusable in the rain. It had been planned to run it in the siding so that have-a-go could continue away from the passenger lines. But the weather had other plans!
Visitors who came on Saturday had a terrific day; those who had planned to, or came on Sunday were sadly disappointed by the restrictions that the weather imposed. And the organising volunteers were gutted (especially when the forecast continuation into the week of wet weather did not materialise...) after all the efforts for the whole weekend.
But it was agreed by all involved that it had been well worth organising, and definitely deserved a repeat performance. Current thinking is for an August weekend event (who knows, maybe good weather?) to capture the school holiday market.
All views welcome!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for leaving a comment.