Day 9 - Warley Model Railway Show Day 2 and Clun Castle

 

This morning there were some Canada Geese cropping the grass close to the lake. It was good to see them. Our Ottawa geese will have now flown south now that there is a coating of snow over the grass.

Before going to the model railway show we took a short trip to Birmingham International Airport using the people mover. The trip is about two minutes.
We entered the Warley Model Railway Show on time and took a look at some of the venders and models that we had enjoyed yesterday. I had a short chat with David Maidment who I had worked with on British Railways in the late 1960s. He came to Canada to do a short project for me in the early 1990s and he well remembered the trip we took in the locomotive between Ottawa and Montreal. In retirement David founded the Charity Railway Children.

I am setting out below a few additional pictures taken at Warley.








Lunchtime





Lots of GWR locomotives

Ffestiniog Railway Locomotives


A war scene
Vintage Trains were operating a series of holiday Polar Express trains between Birmingham Moor Street and Dorridge. These were well filled with families excited to meet Santa. We went to Birmingham New Street and walked through a very crowded Christmas Market to Moor Street to see what locomotive would be used. I was amazed, and delighted, to see 7029, Clun Castle steaming slowly into the platform. I rode and fired Clun Castle on the 1615 Paddington to Banbury. It was the only steam locomotive hauled passenger train out of Paddington at the time (1 June 1965) and was replaced by a diesel a week or so later.
I wrote about this at:
https://churcher.crcml.org/Articles/Article1981_6.html
It was wonderful to see Clun in beautiful condition and still running well.







A diesel worked the other end to avoid the need to turn the train at Dorridge

The journey back to Birmingham International was in a very, very, full train. So full, that we couldn't even get into a carriage, we were forced to stand with some eight others in an entry corridor. Good job we didn't have to put up with this for very long.



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