Bill and I took our grandchildren out for the day recently and we surprised them with a visit to the Severn Valley Railway. We timed it right to have a steam engine take us both ways!
We started out in Kidderminster and travelled up the line past the West Midlands Wildlife Park and saw real camels before stopping at Highley where the old Engine House is now the Visitor Centre. This was a great success as many of the engines where open and you could climb on the footplate and look inside the boiler and so on. Our grandson was transfixed by the size of the engines. (He is, of course, reading Harry Potter at the moment.)
My favourite train was the Royal Mail train with the fabulous sorting office. You could imagine the train whizzing through the night whilst Post Office staff sorted the letters on the move. One of the other marvellous features was the Royal carriages used by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The King had decided that although the carriages should be comfortable, he shunned luxurious furnishings as he felt it was quite wrong for his public to see this times of hardship and later in war times.
King George VI’s royal saloon.
