Chasing trains.

A couple of weekends ago, as a joint birthday/Father's Day outing for Mark's dad, we visited the West Somerset Railway. It's an old line that is still kept open (their tagline is "Steam Trains for All Seasons"), running some old steam trains, and some old diesels, between Bishops Lydeard and Minehead, in Somerset county.

The plan was to visit all the stops along the way (not on the train, but in the car/motorcycle). Because we were pretty zippy on the motorcycle, Mark and I ended up following the same train for the first few stations.

We started out in Bishops Lydeard:

This is the train we would be following:

Behind Mark you can see the train driver:

Here he is, in the center of the picture - you'll see more of him later:

And here's the coal shovel:

Crowcombe Heathfield was the next stop:

Then Stogumber:

Then Williton Station, briefly (we got a bit lost, so we were running a bit behind):

But made up the time to get to Watchet:

Here you can see the Train Driver (as they call him here) with a new cup of coffee. Sadly, he took the lid off to put sugar in, but then got the signal to go, so as he was looking back into the station, he pressed his lever (not sure if he was taking the brakes off or what) and promptly knocked his coffee over and out the window. Everyone watching the train go saw it happen, but he didn't, until he looked forward again as they started going. He looked really sad after that.

We met up with Mark's family again in Watchet, each had an ice cream and then headed to Minehead, the end of the line (we gave up chasing that particular train).

They have a nice turntable in Minehead:

There was a big crowd there - and despite talking to various people, we couldn't quite work out what the big excitement was. Or even if there was a big excitement, or if that was a normal train day for most people. But there was a lot to look at:

And then we went home and had more ice cream. A pretty good day, in my book!