Devon 11 - Day 4, A Small Railway

It was back to an actual working railway today; The Launceston Steam Railway isn’t strictly a heritage line as it’s narrow gauge running on an old standard gauge track bed. It opened in 1983 as a home for some privately owned locos and stock; over the years its expanded from the original 1/2 mile of track and counts in my top few favourite railways. 

The weather was fairly grim first thing, with heavy rain and high winds, but the forecast suggested it would clear and was, for once, correct. A late breakfast (the person doing it today didn’t arrive until nearly 9:30) and a road closure that wasn’t picked up by TomTom, and that had no warnings or diversion signposted, delayed my arrival so I missed the first train; with an hourly service that didn’t matter - it gave me time for a mug of coffee. 

The railway is very scenic if not the smoothest of rides, our haulage for the day was Lilian, slightly to the surprise of the guard given the earlier weather as they tend to use Covertcoat, which has a cab, when it’s wet. 

After the first trip I raided the book shop and bought a railway cartoon book and a hard back on Garratt locomotives, a type which are of particular interest to me; there was 50% off second hand books so they cost me under a fiver - I’m not complaining! 

I had a cheese and onion baguette for lunch before a second trip, at one point we slowed to drop one off the helpers off as apparently they’ve had an issue with sheep on the line so he was going to see if he could find and block up the hole in the fence. I was lucky enough to snag a quick tour of the engine sheds after the trip so managed to photograph the other two steam locos that are regularly used, although they’ve got an issue using Dorothea. 

Lilian and Covertcoat have both had tenders added, principally so they can be fired (stoked) easily; as built, due to the very cramped footplates, the only practical way to fire them is to stop, get off, then stand behind the loco and open a couple of sliding doors at the back for access to the firebox and the coal beside it. In the quarries this wasn’t a problem and indeed it hasn’t been too much of an issue at Launceston until recently. 

They usually use decent quality doubles (smallish coal which I used to use in the boat stove) but the last load delivered was Polish trebles, even smaller lumps which aren’t burning very easily and are generating a lot of smoke so they’re finding it difficult to do the whole 3 1/2 mile run up the line without having to stoke the fire. Kay (one half of the husband and wife team that own the railway) was saying that they’ve had some advice from another heritage railway about how to build the fire which is helping but it’s a learning experience so for the moment Dorothea isn’t getting much running. 

Back at the Inn it was a limited menu with the main offering being Steak on a Stone, otherwise known as cook your own dinner! I’ve done similar things before and I love it as I like my meat hot and cooked through so it’s good to be able to control it myself. 

I forgot to take a picture at the start so was about half way through the steak at this point, and I’d had most of the chips. The last slice of steak was probably around six ounces on its own! Delicious but really it was too much.