Engine Punk

A small train dwarfs its engine I stumbled upon this survivor quite by accident. It was at the Pontypool and Blaenavon Railway . I'd had a good poke around the Big Pit mining museum and heard the steam trains were running that day so went to have a look. The station building is a new one incorporating bits of old ones nearby and when I came on the platform I was promised a train was on its way. We soon began to hear one approaching. It got nearer and nearer and noisier and noisier but there wasn't even a puff of smoke on the horizon. I checked for loudspeakers but the station staff were guileless creatures and kept nodding to the distant valley, saying, "It'll be here soon." On and on it came but still there was no visual sign of it. "Is it a ghost train?" I asked and they roared with laughter. "Nobody's ever asked that before," said the station master, "but I can see what you mean." Five minutes later and it's...

Merddin Emrys at Porthamdog station, June 2012 I've always been mildly fascinated by articulated steam locomotives. How do they keep the steam leaking out when they go round corners? But - having been brought up on the Rev Awdry's railway stories - Fairlie engines bothered me a bit. They were siamese versions of the twin engines and would surely be arguing all the time and not much of a Really Useful Engine. Or would that be engines? However, now that the Skarloey Railway has its own Double Fairlie in the shape and form of Mighty Mac, I am more comfortable with engines that are literally a steam locomotive equivalent of Dr Doolittle's push-me-pull-you and was recently lucky enough to see both Double and Single varieties in action on the Festiniog Railway . The Festiniog is the spiritual home of the Fairlie locomotive. Although the prototype Fairlies ran in the UK, they were most successful abroad where steep and windy conditions prevailed. The Festiniog was the ...