Rheidol Steam Fair + Driver Experience & Museum!

26/8/24

A return to the Rheidol Valley, and at a gala! Despite being our second visit, there were still a lot of new things to see and do. This was the Vale of Rheidol 'Rheidol Steam Fair' with all available steam locomotives in action, which were;

Home Fleet:
. SAR NGG13 No. 60 'Drakensburg'
. GWR Rheidol Tank No. 7
. GWR Rheidol Tank No. 8 'Llewellyn'
. Hunslet 'Quarry Hunslet' No. 604 'Margaret'
(Driver Experience at Aberystwyth)
. Kerr Stuart Wren No. 3114 'Wren'
(Driver Experience at Devils Bridge)
Visiting Locomotive:
. FR Small England No. 4 'Palmerston'

Also in operation on station pilot duties was Hudswell 0-6-0DM No. 11.

The Museum was still being worked on, on our previous visit, so this was our first time seeing it open, and they have certainly done a fantastic job! Spacious, lot of Exhibits to take people's fancy, nice and bright whilst still have a view of the locos in the station, it was wonderful! Was great to see the Dukedog for the first time in years, and seeing Fire Queen for the first time, certainly a quirky design, glad to have seen it here before it goes back to 'home'. The biggest surprise to me was how big the Dick Kerr Tractor was, I'd always assumed they were lower in height!

I took advantage of the Driver Experiences being offered on the day. I have included both in the video, with my dad filming, Margaret was probably my favourite of the two, such a surprisingly simple thing to drive, I asked if these were single man operation in service and indeed they were, which I'm not surprised by, remarkably user friendly for the period!
I also took on the Wren up at Devils Bridge! Now that was a very easy loco to get to grips with, to the point where you have to worry about not going too fast with it, it shoots off like a rabbit! Always lovely to see a Wren running, and now driven one!

This was our first time linesiding at the event, and there are some nice opportunities for photography which we made sure to learn from the professionals beforehand 😅 It is an absolutely beautiful line, the valleys in the distance are like paintings to the eyes. When we were up at Devils Bridge last time, we didn't have time to visit the waterfall and Devils Bridge itself, but since we didn't have the train to worry about this time, we had our chance! Love these waterfall settings, reminds me of Dolgoch waterfall on Talyllyn, and whilst not included in the video, was nice to see the reason behind the name Devils Bridge now, a set of three bridges stack on top of each other, in local legend, the first bridge being made by the Devil.

Hope you enjoy the video and I'll see you in the next one!