Best Steam Driver Experience Day Course?

Even better if 34081 is the booked loco.

 

Reviving this old thread as I can't imagine a better balance of cost and experience to that of the Footplate Taster at the SVR I had last Thursday.

This course is just £150, and you are part of a team of four, two on the footplate each way between Bewdley and Kidderminster, which means crossing a viaduct, going past a safari park, through a 400 yard tunnel... But I am getting ahead of myself.

Booking the course on the preview day of the gala meant I got two tickets to travel that day, which meant more was going on that a more normal day when they are run. This year that entailed 3 full line services, a goods train, and the footplate experience (so five locomotives in steam in total). I was allowed to pick a time slot from several options, picking the lastest available, which ended up being half five, getting back to Bewdley just in time for the last train to Kidderminster. Meeting half an hour before we were due off we watched a short video on safety and got assigned our turn number (1 drives first then fires, 2 fires then drives, then 3 and 4 do the same on the return). I got two, which I think is probably the optimum slot. We headed out to the platform to find 1501 waiting for us, having done 3 other trips that day, and to my surprise two coaches instead of the advertised one. Instead of the usual MK1 BSK which had been nabbed to be part of the service trains for the gala, we had two vintage GWR coaches to take to Kidderminster, pretty much a proper train! I and the No. 1 were taken onto the footplate and given a very basic run down of controls. They didn't want to blind us with information or make us nervous so kept it simple. I got to use the injector before we left to make sure we had plenty of water in the boiler before the climb up to the tunnel. The loco had been sat for a while at Bewdley so the fire needed building up once we got going, which through a gentle bit of instruction I managed, putting 12 to 16 shovels full on and somehow managing to get them in roughly the right area too (the fireman inspected my handwork when we stopped and seemed both pleased and surprised). I actually found firing the more interesting bit of the two jobs, and shoveling on the move gave a great feeling of really working like you'd expect an engineman would. After plunging into the tunnel (no lighting on the footplate of course so you couldn't see a thing) we slowed to a stop: it was my turn to drive. With a toot on the whistle I was off, passing over a canal and up the line until slowing for a red signal on the approach to Kidderminster, which cleared just before we stopped and so I accelerated again until we had to stop just outside the station. Here a service train left and drove past us, with a friendly wave from their crew, and then a shunting move with another steam loco, it was all going on! The signal finally cleared and I drove the last few hundred yards into the station, with the general public looking pretty excited at our arrival. Hands were shook and then it was my turn to ride in the carriages back to Bewdley, with some jolly conversation about how it all went. On our return we were presented with a certificate and a little momento of our session, and a letter telling us we had been given a year's membership to the railway. Given the cost of that and the two gala tickets would set you back about half the cost of the course, I consider it a complete bargain! The loco itself was very user friendly: a spacious cab meaning no one was treading on each others' toes, good visibility, and it was not some overly powerful pacific so you actually felt you were really doing something, although 1501 can certainly put in a turn of speed and accelerate quickly when asked.

Certainly far worse ways to spend £150.

 

A really good review that. A far better is experience is likely with a smaller, more responsive loco than a large express loco for those who have little or no previous experience.