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...

That's me on the left, looking vaguely spiritual but feeling more like The Hooded Claw in that hat, as I proselytise (good word) with my Suzuki clutch tool and a wooden raygun that I found - fashioned by the forces of nature itself - by the tracks of the Liskeard and Caradon Railway The Steampunk movement in Cornwall has been growing steadily during 2011 since a like-minded group of scientists, inventors, artists, explorers, adventurers, dollymopps, ruffians and natural philosophers had a bit-of-a-do fighting a squid in Falmouth last April. Organised by a variety of inspired and industrious individuals under the collective identity of Steampunk Kernow, notable members of our illustrious circle have subsequently survived a hot-air balloon crash, broken innumerable speed records on the Bodmin & Wenford railway (the cream teas went especially quickly) and cavorted with specially created daleks and oods in a Dr Who-themed Christmas party in The Bird in Hand, an ancient coachi...