Way back in the heady days of 2017, I (Ben) won a photography competition being run by the Severn Valley Railway, with a shot taken on one of our winter excursions to the line.
The prize was a Family Day Rover ticket, and after some months of struggling to find a free time where we could not only visit the line, but where the weather conditions would be good enough to get a batch of decent photographs, we finally managed to get to the railway in August.
Boarding at Kidderminster, we joined a train heading for Bridgnorth, with not a lot of opportunities for photography, but an enjoyable ride in prospect instead. The above shot, of Panner 1501 through the window, was the only pic taken on this leg of the journey.
Arriving at Bridgenorth gave a nice window of opportunity to get some pictures of the Ivatt "Flying Pig" mogul running-round, with a plan to get some pictures from out the window of the leading carriage, which were occupying, on the way down to Hampton Loade.
That plan was scuppered somewhat by the swap in traction, as the GWR 28xx freight loco was put onto the train instead, facing the wrong way of course... this is not normally a problem back at the Keighley and Worth Valley (our local line) as geographic conditions mean everything faces the same way, so at least you know a decent head-on shot of a loco is possible if it is heading southbound.
Lighting was a little tricky, the day managing to be both cloudy but bright enough to confuse the light sensor. I got some better results in greyscale.
As it happened, leaning carefully out of the window (or at least, leaning the camera carefully out) gave some reasonable shots, and the loco running tender-first turned out to be a positive in the end.
Our Rover Ticket gave us access to the museum at Highley, which we hadn't done before, and we decamped there for lunch. In addition to a pretty intensive 'normal' summer holiday timetable, the railway was running it's "Wizards Express" Harry Potter-tie-in specials, with a glimpse of how the Hogwarts express would have looked if it had been Nationalised... Class 50 "Ark Royal", which we'd photographed extensively during its visit to the KWVR earlier in the year.
Slightly more appropriate and magical steam haulage for the next special later in the afternoon.
Returning to Bridgenorth, "Taw Valley" (which had been on the rear of our train) was being shunted into the engine sheds. Above is the SR Pacific on arrival at Bridgenorth; again, dull lighting, but this is a loco from my youthful visits to the line and it was nice to see it running again after a period out of use.
Token arty shot...
Back on the train, and with the afternoon drawing to a close, we headed back for Kidderminster, and I thought I'd have a go at some tunnel shots... this is something I do every now and then at the KWVR, I thought trying it here with a significantly longer tunnel might be more interesting.
So back to Kiddy around teatime. Having been trying all manner of arty shots and angles all day, the last pics I took were some snaps of the diesel shunters making a nice parallel departure from Kiddy (mainly for something to do whilst I waited for The Childs to finally get their seatbelts on and stop messing around).
It being an improvised, spur of the moment shot, naturally that was the one picked up for publication. Cest la vie, but it's always nice to see your stuff in the mags. Anyway, a nice day out, and a pleasant change to actually ride the trains on the SVR compared to our usual lineside walks and using the buffets and shops, which is about all we've managed the last few years on our winter visits.
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