WSR Autumn Steam Gala: 25th - 27th September 2026

WSR Galas hit the ground running way back in March 1996 with the S&D 30 event and haven't missed a beat since. Releasing the pigeons at Washford was a nice touch at that event. Were they carried aboard the GWR Siphon? Can't remember now.

 

I wholeheartedly apologise if my post was badly worded and sounded like a moan. Wasnt intentional.

 

71000 arrives back on the friday of steam gala, imagine how epic that would be as a guest loco Saturday/Sunday. One can only dream.

 

The Duke returns to Southall on the Saturday, the day after the final day of the railtour. [BJ]

 

P

oh okay. Thats shame.

 

No worries at all, these things happen. Hope you will enjoy attending our Galas in future.

 

WSR Gala timetables now available - no 4th guest

https://www.west-somerset-railway.co.uk/uploads/wsr_asg_2026_friday_ptt_v11.pdf

https://www.west-somerset-railway.co.uk/uploads/wsr_asg_2026_saturday_ptt_v11.pdf

https://www.west-somerset-railway.co.uk/uploads/wsr_asg_2026_sunday_ptt_v11.pdf

 

Not quite true, but you'd be forgiven for missing it seeing as we haven't formally announced it yet - Andrew Barclay no.2315 'Lady Ingrid' is the final locomotive for the lineup, subject to agreement of contract. 'Lady Ingrid' is freshly outshopped from work that has been undertaken at Williton, it felt rude not to use it! Subject to having sufficient crews, it will be undertaking shunting demonstrations at Minehead.

Finding locomotives for this event has been a total nightmare but I am happy with the lineup we have secured and incredibly grateful to our friends at the Dartmouth Steam Railway, Isle of Wight Railway and Bahamas Locomotive Ltd. Our intended 4th guest was sold so became no longer available!

The lineup may not have any big flashy Pacifics but it will have smaller engines working hard, and probably the last chance for a very long time to be able to see three 78XXs in steam together at the same railway.

As you can imagine, we spent much of our yearly budget on the flagship event in the Spring securing the mega lineup for that event! We are never going to be able to justify two 'mega' events per year. Let's hope people come in sufficient numbers to justify us hosting two events at all!

Another factor to consider is that the Autumn Gala season is becoming increasingly busy with events. We chose the weekend we did to avoid clashing with the MHR & GCR galas the following week (what was once our 'traditional' pre Covid ASG slot). The weekend we went for last year was marred with relatively poor weather and clashed with an ELR Gala (that looked great). I've never been a particularly big fan of a late October Gala in any case, when the nights are drawimg in, it is far more difficult to keep people at the Railway so secondary spend suffers.

You'd be a total fool to try to go up against the SVR, so we deemed the only suitable weekend for us was the one we chose. However this has meant clashing with events at Pontypool and Blaenavon, L&B and the NYMR (maybe too far away to worry too much). This further reduces the pool of available engines. It also happens to be the WSR PLC/WSRA/WSRHT AGM on Saturday 26th so this has taken away some of the operational resource we could do with to run the Railway on that day.

It is a never ending debate, and we will never get it absolutely right..!

I would be interested to hear thoughts on where we could sit the Autumn Gala next time around...!

 

I take it the HC and fireless not doing anything BV ride etc at Minehead ?

NYMR ,PBR and WSR seems a decent long weekend plan .

 

Interesting to know an operational loco has been sold!

Surprised to see on the timetable that the 2MT is being let loose with 5 carriages, should be a great way to end the day!

I think the weekend you have picked is the only realistic one, with the 40s weekend two weeks earlier, and then the SVR and GCR/MHR clashes either side of the planned weekend. Going back a while ago, the MHR was mid September and the GCR gala was a weekend later, so everything sort of worked out for the WSR to take the first October weekend, but things change!

 

Was trying to think whether that feels clumsy or inspired, but I suspect the former. Presumably the date of the gala has been in the calendar from early in the year, so you'd have thought that the three organisations might have co-ordinated so as to hold their AGMs on either the previous or following weekends? It would make comparatively little difference in terms of the AGMs but potentially rather more in terms of operational resources.

Tom

 

Careful, you might inadvertently start the biggest thread this forum's ever seen!