After the drizzle of last year's Railway gala at Tinker's Park, this year's event was warm and sunny, well rather too hot in the tiny coaches with little ventilation! Still, what better way to spend a sunny summer afternoon than around steam trains, steam rollers and traction engines, and model railways too! It turned out to be a long day, having spent the morning at the local Fire Station open day, including a ride in a fire engine. My son rated the fire engine above the steam train and steam roller rides of the aftenoon, but still insisted he liked trains more than I did - he must really really like fire engines then!
Visiting loco this year was Kidbrooke, a rather nice Bagnall 0-4-0, sharing duties with the resident steam loco Sao Domingos, an O&K 0-6-0. It was good to see the line has been extended since last year, by about 50 yards, and the "station" improved. There was a collection of industrial locos too, this photo (below) should come in useful when I come to paint those KBScale skips I have ...
The volunteers at Tinker's Park have been busy in the past year, there being a new railway shed. So new the rails in the floor haven't yet been connected to the railway outside, but it was in use for the model railway exhibition. There was a reasonable selection of layouts, but the highlight for me was Raven Rock, portraying a slate quarry in 0-16.5, and including a working balance incline. The scenery and detail was superb, so no apologies for including a couple of photos!
More photos below:
