Bewdley 2003

A steam locomotive is difficult to photograph. First of all, it's big. Second, it's full of interesting detail. To see it all means you lose the detail that makes it interesting. Here's the best all up photo of it I could muster.

Kiddiminster station is the jumping off place for the Severn Valley railway. Turns out there are many steam locomotives that operate from here. You could join a holiday train excursion from here, or a brunch or dinner train and experience travel as it used to be.

Much of the interest of the locomotive itself is in the mechanisms of locomotion. This is the steam piston which drives the wheels which ultimately drive the train.

On our particular trip, the train contained 7 antique rail cars, each perfectly refurbished in their original design.

Along the sides of the cars were emblems of the line they belonged to in their original service. These were fantastic with wonderful hand-painted detail.

Along the sides of the cars were emblems of the line they belonged to in their original service. These were fantastic with wonderful hand-painted detail.

Along the sides of the cars were emblems of the line they belonged to in their original service. These were fantastic with wonderful hand-painted detail.

Inside the locomotive there is a mass of pipes, gauges, controls that I found interesting in their detail.

When you shoot with a 5 mega-pixel format, you can crop an image pretty severely and still get wonderful detail

During the trip, a fireman shoveled coal into the firebox nearly continuously. On this particular afternoon, we burned nearly 5 tons of coal. Not an inexpensive hobby.

Here on the left of the image is the firebox glowing literally white hot. And in the lower right, some of the valves that let water into the boiler. A steam engine consumes coal, obviously, but it also consumes a lot of water. With each stroke of the steam piston, some water-turned-steam is lost and has to be replenished at each station.

A steam engine is also a pretty dirty place. Coal dust, dripping oil, and water escaping around valves make it a pretty dirty place to work. I suppose that even when brand new this was likely to have been the case.

Near the end of one leg of the trip we stopped for coal and water. Parked on a siding next to us was this locomotive which I learned had set the land speed record for steam locomotives ... 136 mph.

This was a massive engine and every thing about it said two things ... built for power and streamlined for speed. Cool!

Fun with Photoshop.

Fun with Photoshop.