As stitching weekends go...

... this one was a disaster. But, as Railway Weekends go, this one was BRILLIANT!

First, little about the stitching I have done. Last week was the turn of White Nights. This was it four weeks ago.

And this is what it looked like at the end of stitching on Thursday (without the use of flash).

And that has been it. I did do some more of the pin cube SAL on the way to 'The Railway' but stitching on the local train which stops every two minutes was not that successful!

Even if you have no interest in steam locomotives and railways watch the video at the end, or the one on YouTube and you will see why the weekend was brilliant.

As mentioned previously this weekend saw the final two days of the nine day 'Steel, Steam and Stars II' Gala. Here are some of the better photos.

Before we start, this is the lounge inside the Thompson Buffet. The carriage appeared in the British Transport film 'The Elizabethan Express'. Filmed in 1954 it tells the story the non stop passenger service which ran daily between London and Edinburgh. The Other Half and a few others, me included, restored this carriage to it's former glory (it was an empty shell) for the last 'Steel, Steam on Stars Gala' two years ago. With a fully stocked, twenty two foot long, bar it was the most popular carriage of the event. Unfortunately, last year this carriage ran away during a shunting move and smashed in to a stationary locomotive, no one was hurt but the carriage suffered over £25.000 worth of damage! So this gala saw it out on a train for the fist time since it was repaired, again with a fully stocked bar!

This is a still from the original film. The lounge being through the archway.

Some other photos. One of the stars of the show.

Ex GWR 'Dukedog' 4-4-0 No 9017

At Berwyn Station

The Gala ended last night with a ten locomotive cavalcade. This is our video it was taken inside the Signal Box the loud bangs you can here are the levers being moved to operate the signals.Turn up the volume, as the noise is fantastic. There are better quality videos on YouTube. One of them is HERE


Just prior to the Cavalcade it had been raining but just as the first loco came into sight the sun came out and there was a perfect rainbow forming an arch over the whole event. This topped off a brilliant weekend.

Another two items for the UFO pile?

That's how I felt on Thursday afternoon!

Let's start at the very beginning...

... a very good place to start. OK I'll try not to turn into Julie Andrews.

So on Thursday we packed up our stuff and set off to The Railway for 'Steel, Steam and Stars II'. Estimated departure time 09.00, actual departure time 09.30, not too bad. We got to the top of the road and I realised that I had left my allergy pills at home. As much as I like going to The Railway I am actually allergic to the place, or something there that's not at home. So false start No 1. We set off again. We managed to get a little further this time when The Other Half said that he had left his razor behind. False start No 2. So about fifteen minutes down the road I decided to get the Pale Blue Santa out. I then had a Victor Meldrew moment,

'I don't believe it!'

I had gone and left every single floss colour, and there are many at home, bar one! I think The Other Half did contemplate doing a U turn in the middle of the road but before he could put the brakes on I said that we were not going back, impressed? Well don't be. I had the Rhodes Butterfly Biscornu in my handbag, plus the one I'm going to do for May. I also knew that at my Mum's were the Red and Purple Snowmen from Shepherds Bush and four Jim Shaw Snowmen, I have been indulging in some more stash enhancement. Anyway the one floss colour I had was pale blue and that's the majority of the Santa. It was some hours later, whilst at my Mum's that I happened to notice that I didn't seem to have enough pale blue left. A quick check on the chart and I found that everything I had done in pale blue should have been done in two strands of white and one strand of turquoise. I frogged some of it and gave up. This is what it looks like.

The pale blue on the left hand side needs to come out.

So I changed to the Rhodes Butterfly Biscornu, and guess what I made exactly the same mistake on side two as I did on side one. More frogging! This is it corrected and added to.

That was Thursday. On Friday morning I opened the curtains and this was parked ten yards in front of my window.
If you don't know much about steam locomotives this one is 6100 Royal Scot and she is COOL, even without the name plates, which were put on later.

We had a fantastic Railway Weekend. All over the country photos are probably being uploaded as I type and there will no doubt be some great videos on YouTube. I've already dropped a few names in to this post but this one is the best, I had a long conversation with Pete Waterman, described on the radio this morning as 'Britain's most famous trainspotter', but the rest of the world know him from Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the pop production team who made Kylie famous. How did this one start? I said how much I had enjoyed his TV series on railways and in particular the bit where they showed you how British Railways made a ham sandwich look like it had two slices of ham in it when actually there was only one!

One last thing, in honour of my new blog my Mum got me a blog warming present, can't wait to get started!