WSR Spring Steam Spectacular - Fri 2nd May to Mon 5th May 2025

More welcome guests have arrived. <BJ>



Thanks to Seb Welsh and wsr.org for the image

 

Great tool box! The corridor connection end door made me laugh, wonderfully restored GW coach and LMS door!

 

Lineside fire 17.15 twixt Williton and Castle Hill as we drove past this afternoon, fingers crossed not a bad omen.

 

Really looking forward to this one! Hope all goes well for the team operating the railway over the next few days.

 

Saturday tickets sold out online, I assume they will still be available in person on the day?

 

Yes absolutely still available on the day!

 

Just to advise that advance tickets are once again available online. (Saturday tickets I believe are available until midnight tonight).

https://www.west-somerset-railway.co.uk/events/view/spring-steam-spectacular-2025

 

Fun first morning at the WSR, though I had a rover for today I just ended up linesiding (work timings today meant my best chance of hearing everything I wanted to going uphill was to zip between stations and lineside locations rather than travelling), though I'll be back again on Monday for more. Focused on the Williton-Lydeard end today and will swap to the western end on Monday.

Crowd numbers looked very healthy, weather was great, and the Terrier on the climb to Crowcombe sounded absolutely glorious. The timetable was about 20-30 mins adrift when I left, seemed to start with Bahamas staying at Crowcombe on its first down train this morning a lot longer than planned but not sure why. Enjoying the rest of Friday and Sat/Sun too on Railcam while I work, but can't wait to be back on Monday morning.

 

Firechurch causing mayhem inbetween Stogumber & Crowcombe, three fires, one which we stamped out but the other two were dealt with by the crew of the Lanky tank heading down to Williton.

9351 & 2999 finally left Williton 66 minutes late, an interesting weekend ahead.

 

Edging towards 90 min delays

 

I got back to BL around 1hr and 20 mins down - a day bedevilled by lineside fires especially between Williton and Stogumber but also through to Crowcombe. One near Roebuck Crossing (I think) had a fire engine in attendance even late in the day. The rumour / scuttlebut was about Fenchurch as a cause - I hope that's not justified as she's a lovely little engine. There was fair bit of effort put in by train crews to beat out or damp down the fires, some use of the degging pipe off the footplate if I'm not mistaken.

A real shame as otherwise today would otherwise have been a great Gala day. Fingers crossed tomorrow can/will be better and anyway, I've got a 4 day ticket so I'm here for the duration.

Anyway, as I always say - it's the WSR, and it's worth it and my thanks to all who made this happen.

 

Hi all,

Please note that the WTT for today has been amended. Unfortunately Set DQB is now unavailable so we've had to shuffle things around.

I tried to upload a copy, but NatPres isn't having it - there's a copy on the WSR and WSR Gala planning team Facebook page.

Sunday and Monday timetables also will be changed. These will be shared once done.

Cheers,
B

 

A chap I spoke to today helpfully and constructively pointed out that for most of yesterday Fenchurch was only running between BL and Crowcombe Heathfield so she couldn't have been the cause of the lineside fires between Crowcombe and Williton.

Happy to be corrected and to post a correction here.

Tomorrow's weather looks a bit cooler than today and yesterday and that is no bad thing after todays mid-Summer style heat.

Another good day on the railway though so my thanks to one and all for staging this event.

 

Do not know when the fires were but I saw Fenchurch on the webcam at Williton and according to the timetable it did a trip to Stogumber as well t & t with 11456
I assume the fires were why trains were an hour late by 17:00?

 

Amended timetables now on the website for both Sunday and Monday, DMU will be out ensuring minimal disruption to planned times - good idea!

 

Is the coach set dropped because of the fire risk and minimising delays or is it because of maintenance / break down? The gala was great today, however the extra coach set was certainly missed and you subsequently were missing the flexibility & hopping between trains that the galas previous gave. Thanks to everyone involved however in putting it on.

 

We saw Fenchurch passing Castle Hill at approx 16:30 climbing towards Crowcombe. It was soon after that the delays really kicked in. [BJ]

 

Plenty of gala photos already on Steve Edge's web site:

https://www.wsr.org.uk/

I stumbled across a good video of action on Friday. Don't know if it's by anyone posting on this forum. There are distant shots around 20mins in, appearing to show a significant lineside fire. I think it's in the area of Leigh Wood near Stogumber, but perhaps someone more knowledgeable could confirm.

 

Understanding is there was an issue with the brake coach on the QB set, meaning they were unable to use it. They were able to extract two of the coaches from the set to add them to set C part way through the day and bolster it up to six coaches from its original four, adding much needed extra capacity to that set. The addition of the DMU for Sunday and Monday brings the number of sets back up to four meaning no services will be cancelled (all being well!) for the rest of the weekend, so excellent work from the gala team for managing to get this organised at such short notice.

Delays seemed to be much better today, at worst being around the 20 minute mark for the most part, still an enjoyable day with excellent weather regardless!