Mid-Hants Railway | Watercress Line | Spring Steam Gala 24th-26th April 2026

What absolute froth being posted here today seriously. - Personally 20 is one that has avoided me a few times of which I am looking forward to seeing it in steam and moving irrespective of how underpowered or pre-grouping it is.

 

A loco I've yet to see so glad that she's having a visit down south, will be interesting to hear the bark on her!

 

Very much likewise, will make some good noise and i’m sure it will bring in more punters than having the same guests but a different number each time.

 

The treatment for that infraction should be to crawl into the oil bath with a short handled sledge hammer and remove the little end pin for inspection (I was told about the difficulty of this task by an ex Ramsgate fitter)

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Nice one! But dinosaurs are creatures of wide open spaces (easier to pick up incoming asteroids) and don't do crawling into small baths.

Bryan

 

I really enjoyed Furness 20 at Blaenavon a couple of years ago, when I'm pretty sure it had unassisted runs on two coach sets on the pretty savage gradients there. From memory there certainly used to be a time when it felt like if a Mid-Hants gala had a small or old visitor you could confidently assume they'd be put purely on two-coach Alresford-Ropley runs but it does feel like some of the more unusual visitors have ventured further in recent years. I haven't rechecked timetables but I'm thinking of Fenchurch having at least one full line trip on its visit, for instance.

Usually Mid-Hants gala are a relative 'must-do' for me regardless of the line-up just because of the gradients, and it's only clashes with other commitments that would stop me attending. So I expect to be there for the Friday of this one and I'm certainly intrigued to see what the Furness loco is used for.

Slightly concerned for The Gricing Owl that he's come across as 'the man that complains'. He's always very careful with his phrasing, emoji use and sign-offs to make clear that he's gently mocking himself for his heritage railway interests being narrow rather than genuinely complaining any time a railway fields or hires anything that isn't a 1960s liveried Southern appropriate loco on matching stock. But perhaps that nuance isn't always being spotted.

 

Personally I always refer to them as original or re-built. I prefer the looks of the re-built.
Concerning the Furness 0-4-0, although it would be nice to see it in steam I do doubt if the MHR has appropriate stock, passenger or goods, for it to pull. Many years ago the railway hired in a Beattie 2-4-0T for a gala and had it pulling a single DMU coach. The combination looked dreadful.

 

Another vote of support for No. 20 here, never got a good shot of it so looking forward to this

 

Totally correct!

Thanks for your post including that reference to how I deal with my dreadfully narrow focus.

Bryan

 

Austerity No. 68067 added to the line up as the third guest

 

Looking forward to hearing that

 

Any update on when the timetable for this event will be available please?

Many thanks.

Bryan

 

To my understanding it's still being worked on. It's not even gone live to volunteers yet. I would expect sometime this week hopefully.

 

And today, with less than two weeks to go before the event I get an email headed up:-

Two Weeks until the Steam Gala! Book now!

Great, I thought, the timetable must be out now. So I clicked the 'Find Out More' link and it took me . . . . . straight back to the same old page that continues to tell me the timetable will be out three weeks before the event.

OK, I'm a small brained, naive dinosaur, so I have to assume I'm just missing a link on that page to the timetable?

And with my closest railway, the Spa Valley Railway running a Thomas weekend over those dates, and the Bluebell using a wr loco plus the BR Standard 5 on Victorian era wooden coaches at present, the Mid-Hants is starting to look like a no-brainer for me.

But it's quite a long day (or days if I stay a night locally), and quite a cost just to end up buying a decent supply of the incredible granary rolls at the Four Marks bakers.

Bryan

 

I get that there are other priorities than to write a timetable but to post on the webpage saying "it will be out 3 weeks before the event" and we are now less than 2 weeks away and still no timetable is a little bit embarrassing to be honest in my opinion. Some sort of update would be appreciated.

 

Is there a problem with the line up?

 

Your guess is as good as mine to be honest, if there is an issue, would still appreciate an update.

 

I have seen comments elsewhere that the GCR is short of operational locos at the moment and that the Standard Five may not be available.

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73156 shouldn't really be needed at GCR over 24-26 bearing in mind GCR is having their diesel gala that very weekend

 

It may of course be down to movement costs which I guess have shot up.
Another forum said two locos were removed from the Swanage proposed diesel visitors for the gala due to transport costs. No idea if that was the case, but could believe it.