We're up to late-Autumn with the old railway photography posts! So for today; the Llangollen Railway is one of those lines that we hadn't had chance to visit until 2021... Amy's Godparents are volunteers on the line, and we had the opportunity to break a journey from Porthmadog to the West Midlands there at the end of the October Half Term.
There weren't any steam-hauled services running that day, but they were trialling an ever so slightly eccentric shuttle service to scenic Berwyn, with a shunter, converted Pigeon Brake Van (so called because it was used for transporting racing pigeons), an open truck, and a brake van. We decided to ride this service.
It had been raining like mad for days, so the river was carrying a lot of floodwater.
The shuttle on arrival at Berwyn. Lovely little cafe at this lovely little station, and very friendly vols running the facilities.
We hopped back on the next service train to Llangollen, with the Railfreight 31 in charge. I (Ben) haven't had much chance to photograph 31's as they're rare visitors to the KWVR, though Amy got a cracking picture of one visiting our home line about 10 years ago. I ended up switching to shooting greyscale for a bit though, as the lighting was a bit wierd.
Back at Llangollen.
31 running-round later in the day, after we'd done a full-line run on the train.
We'd hoped for a ride on the shuttle, but it wasn't due out for a bit, and me and Amy had to be in the Midlands by tea, so we left The Childs with the in-laws for the rest of the day, so they could have another ride.
All in all, a nice day out, and we're going to have another crack at the line later in 2022, hopefully the lighting will be a little more consistent.
Considering it was a first visit, and we hadn't done a recce visit for photography beforehand, I was lucky enough to get some shots in print. A shot was published in the January Trackside...
...and another in Rail Express Magazine.
So yeah, we'll be hopefully back there again in summer of 2022.
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