Swanage Steam Gala 2013

Glad you enjoyed your visit.
Incidentally, additional passengers arose due to Swanage Folk Festival being scheduled that weekend.

 

Just like to say I thoroughly enjoyed my visit on the Sunday, and it was a nice surprise to see a dirty 34028. The variety of Doubleheaders was good and yet not to many, and the 10coach at the end of the day was a fitting finale. Only thing I'd say though that if it wasn't for me turning up I would not have been aware of a lot of the stuff that was going on. I only realised there was the 10coach when 1 of the line's volunteers pointed it out to me on the WTT, and I'd seen no mention of a dirty Bulleid. Maybe next time have a bit more information available beforehand on the website? Minor quibble I'll admit, but at times some of the trains seemed a bit quiet for a gala so if everything had been listed maybe there would of been more people to enjoy what a very good event this was. Otherwise roll on next year, think this was the third year I've visited on the trot, and each year has got better

 

Perhaps not mentioned by the railway itself but the appearance of Manston and Eddystone has been discussed on this thread. <BJ>

 

But not until too late in the day for those travelling long distances!

 

The appearance of Eddystone was only really decided during a chance conversation between a few members of staff on the Wednesday of the week prior to the gala, and basically because of pressures of work. The loco hadn't seen service since the beginning of June and so had acquired a certain 'work-worn' appearance while stood up at the top of No.1 siding; with the limited number of staff involved in preparing for the gala we had to prioritise getting everything available, tested etc rather than cleaning '28.

It would have been nice to publicise it, but then again it would have been even nicer to have enough people around to clean everything!

Thanks for all comments about the gala, both positive and negative; they will all be fed into the debrief meeting, and any lessons learned will be taken into account in the planning of future events. In the meantime, and I will be starting a separate thread about this, but an extra date to add to the diary this year is a 'Winter Warm-Up' event on Saturday December 28; planned to have 30053, 34070, 33111 and D6515 (subject to availability) in traffic, with 2 passenger sets (1 steam heat, 1 ETH) and 1 freight set. More details to follow in due course...

 

Always a fan of weathered locos, if it were to be a pre-planned thing for the future it'd be a nice bonus!