SRS Blog > Visit to the Severn Valley Railway

Published 6th April 2004

I'm just back from a week in sunny Shropshire, where we went on holiday over Easter. An almost completely steam-free week, apart from the first day when we went to the Severn Valley Railway. We journied down from Bridgnorth to Kidderminster behind GWR tank 1501, looked round their super little museum at that end and had lunch before coming back up behind a Warship (I think - bit hazy on these modern forms of locomotion) breaking our journey at a country park on the way up to allow the boys to run off some excess energy. The park is a request stop, so one rather grandly flags down a train to resume the journey - in our case Hinton Manor.

There were a couple of other engines in steam on the day: the magnificent West Country Pacific "Taw Valley" (currently running in the guise of classmate "Ottery St Mary") and something else, possibly a Black 5, which I only saw from afar from the country park. A highly recommended railway, it would be absolutely perfect if one could only get in the sheds and workshop! The Severn Valley have extensive engineering facilities, taking on much heavy overhaul work for other preserved lines in the country (and, indeed, were reponsible for the major overhaul on my Aveling roller in 1992).