Visit to Quainton Railway, Tues 21th June

Hi Folks,

The second club event arranged for the summer season was a visit to Quainton Railway and around 15 members attended the trip to take photographs.

Last night the centre was open to just club members and although various museum sheds had been closed we were given a free access to roam around the centre.

Once inside the main complex there was an eye catching train called Defiant, the name given to it on entering service in 1941 which commemorated the many types of aircraft which took part in the Battle of Britain.

Defiant was one of a series of Castle Class engines built and after service it ended its life in Carmarthen but was saved from the scrap yard. From the header on the front of the engine it was also known as ‘The Royal Dragon’.

Another of the Castle series was Caerphilly Castle which I remember seeing in the Science Museum but I understand has since been moved to the Swindon Museum.

The Defiant’s cab inside has been restored to a very high standard and various items like spades and even coats are laid out as perhaps they would have been on a passenger run

The whole thing has been set up as a war train with a table which Sir Winston Churchill may have planned a battle

An area to relax afterwards

Another compartment shows a warden’s hat and a typewriter and a picture of Sir Winston Churchill taken in the carriage

On the other side of the platform was a Pullman carriage which was a luxury carriage of its day

The luxury travel would include a silver service menu but they only had kettles to make the tea in those days. I’m afraid I was caught by the light from the window in these two photos but could perhaps enhance them later

In the carriage itself we see the luxury, with bottles of champagne on the tables

The general view of the carriage

but you could make the photograph look real with the right angles, now where is the sepia mode on my camera.

That roll looks a bit hard though lol

Anyway, I have got too serious describing the trains and outside in the yard there was a yellow one

and a blue one, see I know my trains from the ‘Aussie Ian Allen Train Spotting books’

and even a green one to test the colour settings on one’s camera

I heard this train was built in Scotland and went out to American

and has cleverly found its way back over here

Now Guy Fawkes could have probably got away with his plot, had he had one of these instead of carrying all those heavy bags under the Parliament building

We had a lovely warm evening for this event

and taking pictures of trains that some of us old enough remember travelling on

and finding unusual angles to take them from

and lots of past carriages to see

and old stations to stand on

 

I use to have this carriage in my model Tri-ang train set, it threw out an arm to collect the mail on a selected piece of rail but couldn’t see the arm on this one.

This train has Brooklyn on the front now did I hear some one’s son is call Brooklyn

I think somebody has signalled me to stop writing anymore lol

The evening ended for me with a hot chocolate from the station’s vending machine but hot Oxo wasn’t a choice in the machine.

An enjoyable evening and the next event is a ‘Treasure Hunt’ in two weeks time, apparently Annie is organising it. I am unsure whether the club has hired a helicopter from Castle Air Charters but I’m certain Aussie Allen will be hovering somewhere in the background lol

 

Derek