[Jun 7, 2024] Strictly Bulleid 2 7th-9th of June at Swanage Railway (Swanage Railway)

A challenging day for the Swanage Railway on Saturday. Several events out of their control led to the delays which were up to over an hour by the time we left at around 18.30. I hope that the people taken ill at Corfe Castle are okay. The poor lady who broke her hip was waiting a very long time for an ambulance. She appeared to be well looked after by the station staff in difficult circumstances.
With things the way they were we focused on travelling behind 35018 and 34092 as we had not yet travelled behind them. Had a couple of trips behind 35018 and one with 34092. Lovely sounds on the River Frome section from both locos as we had 34092 top and tailing with BiL. Also got a run in behind 34028. The delays thwarted our other plans.
We spent a fair bit on the stalls on Swanage station. My Sister even wanted a souvenir Strictly Bulleid II mug!
We managed to see all of the locos but didn't get photos of all of them.
Really appreciated the excellent souvenir brochure by Trackside magazine.
Overall a good day despite the problems encountered.

Was it worth it? Well, my Dad who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's last year and who is a big Bulleid fan (they are his favourite Class of loco) was overcome with emotion when I asked him what he thought about seeing so many in the same place at the same time. With a look of delight on his face and a lot of emotion in his voice he said "It is like being back at Woking in the 1960's!"
I must admit that this brought a lump to my throat.

Thank you to everyone involved for staging a very impressive Gala.




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Not long home from an astonishing day at this gala.

I had tickets for Friday and Saturday with an Travelodge room booked at Poole on Friday night, but couldn't manage to get down on Friday. So I did a long out and back from home on Saturday with the intention of adding to my stock of Bulleid photos to use in my SR steam loco memoirs, to break up an otherwise almost endless stream of timing logs from the 1960s. I got to the very large Main Beach Car Park in Swanage (complete with clean toilets) at just gone 08.00 and left at circa 19.00 . In between I spent most of that time on the bridge (very close to the car park) overlooking the loco shed in one direction and Swanage station in the other direction; at the very popular loco shed viewing point; and on the narrow footpath that runs past the loco shed the other side of the line - where photography was possible on a mostly cloudy day.

There was almost continuous Bulleid activity - with timings slipping due to the reasons already covered. Such was the level of activity at Swanage that I only got back to my car to briefly eat my breakfast at 15.20 hrs - after I had left home at 05.05. And breakfast was just my emergency rations as I wanted to avoid missing any significant elements of the incredible Bulleid action by walking away to find more suitable food.

Many, many like souls to chat to during the day - adding to the pleasure of one of the most incredible days of gricing SR steam that started 64 years ago.

Even when I left the car park at circa 19.00 my day was not over - I went to Harman's Cross for an hour or so to see even more Bulleid action (in sunshine too), before reluctantly dragging myself away at 20.00 to drive home to Kent.

An enormous thank you to the very, very many staff and volunteers at the Swanage Railway who must have worked/still be working so hard to produce such an incredible event so many years after the world came to an end on 10 July 1967. And not forgetting all those whose efforts allowed 8 Bulleid pacifics to be working on that Heritage Railway at the same time.

It's now 01.00 on Sunday moning, I've been up and very active since 04.20 on Saturday and somehow I've got to calm down from a very high levely of enjoyment/excitement to get what I imagine is some much needed sleep!

Photos to follow.

Bryan B.

 

34053 steam brakes have jammed on this morning. Still at Swanage.

 

Has now left to pick up the 9:25

 

There were three. Lady on the up side with the hip issue. Lady two odd hours later (for which the ambulance came for) a fall and subsequent head injury on the down platform and a third in the station car park where another lady was reading the signs about sepsis on the side of said ambulance and tripped up the kerb and suffered a suspected broken hip.

 

34081 still a no show today. 34070 replaces it again today

 

I didn't realise it was as many as 3 incidents at Corfe alone, I do have a lot of sympathy both for those injured and hopefully they're all ok, and the railway, who did their best in the circumstances and my thanks to those involved in organising the event, I'll have to pop back at some point for the T3.

The railway did seem very busy and the MN double header and 35018 solo were standing room only, so hopefully the financial risk has been worth it for the railway. I did see that crews were also allowing cab visits during dwell times.

Here are a final couple of mobile pictures to go with the ones I posted yesterday.

 

Heres My footage from Yesterday, A good day despite the delays,

 

My take on the event yesterday. Great effort from all involved, firstly to put the event on in the first place, but then to carry on going when things went wrong. Certainly was a record to capture eight different locomotives in a day:

 

I'm just glanced through some of my photos from yesterday, picked out a few, done some very quick edits and made some very low res copies.

As mentioned earlier, I was after specific loco shots. And I took advantage of the often overcast conditions to use a variety of positions based on the bridge overlooking both Swanage station and the loco shed.

Bryan B

 

The first injury was on the up side and she was the one that caused the platform closure to trains. The second one was on the down platform .
Don

 

Good shots as usual. Don’t know how we missed each other as I must have been standing close to you when you took the three loco bridge shots. Don

 

During our travels yesterday I noticed that the platforms at both Corfe and Swanage were very busy at times. The entrance at Swanage had two people checking tickets but wonder if the entrances to both should have been closed until crowds had dispersed a bit. I also wonder if the crowds had something to do with two of the incidents. My mobility isn’t good now and I felt vulnerable at times so much so that I stayed up the platform at Swanage even though I wanted to buy from one of the stands.

The railway wouldn’t want any more attention from the authorities.

 

Yes, my bad. Thank you for the correction, have edited accordingly

 

Hope that today is running better timetable wise,
The last train that I accepted from Swanage last night was the 2050 Beerrx , at 2200 before the night turn signalman took over from me.

 

Ran 10-15 late so far. However lineside fire between Norden and River Frome means trains are terminating at Norden and that alterations to the schedule are likely. 35006 just left Swanage to meet down train at Harmans Cross

 

Its so good to see you have your finger on the pulse....you know so much more than the people on the ground.

 

I guess you don't get many night turn signalmen on the Swanage Railway. I did half think about going on those night trains to re-create the days (SR normal steam days) when we used to get full value out of our SR 7 day river tickets by sleeping on the down/up mail trains and /or the 02.45 newspaper train ex Waterloo. Those trains had a few passenger coaches as well as all the parcels etc vans. We would get some sort of sleep unless we had one of the 'fast' Nine Elms crews driving , when we would stay awake to time the run! But to have done that at your incredible event instead of coming home last night, I would need to have booked into accommodation that didn't mind me returning for some decent sleep in the early hours of the morning!

 

Fantastic weekend. Spent Friday, Saturday evening and first thing today photographing and Saturday making use of my day and night rover. Thanks all! A few photos, need some sleep before editing the rest.

 

First time I can recall us having a full night turn in since the filming of Dunkirk in 2016 (I think). The night turns were quite carefully rostered though, with all people involved either currently doing shift work or having done it previously, so they were all familiar with the challenge of keeping themselves alert in the small hours.