Monday 21 May - A Day on the Welshpool and Llanfair Railway

The sunny and hot weather continues. Charles Spencer picked me up early in the morning and we went straight to Cyfronydd crossing where I made a thorough inspection before moving on to Llanfair Caereinion.  I had suggested Monday for this crossing work because no service trains were running.  However, there were two round trips for steam driver experience using Joan, the lovely red locomotive. On top of this, the railway was taking delivery by road at Welshpool of a restored Hungarian car and sending out a second similar car for work.  It turned out there was a lot of activity on the railway.

Joan on the driver experience train at Welshpool later in the day

My reason for being here was to inspect all the railway crossings of public roads and to make recommendations.  As well as Cyfronydd I looked at the crossings at:

- Dolarddyn Road

- Castel Caereinion

- Coppice Lane

- Cwm Lane

 and finally we stopped at the private crossing at New Drive

At Dolarddyn Road we caught Joan where the fireman is returning to the locomotive after flagging the crossing.

Joan returning to Llanfair at Cwm Lane

We returned to Llanfair for a sandwich lunch and then went to Welshpool where I was able to watch the fun as the Hungarian coach was taken off the low loader lorry and a second coach was loaded away. The work on the "new" coach is excellent and the railway will proudly be putting it into service this weekend. The skill of the lorry driver in backing his low loader on to the ramp as well as the knowledge of the railway crew was impressive.

"New" coach being moved into position in the Welshpool yard

Pulling the "new" coach off the low loader using a barrier wagon

The "new" coach safely on W & Ll rails

In the bay platform at Welshpool

Chattenden was the motive power for this work assisted by Joan to allow a straight forward swap between the "new" coach and the one going out.

The outgoing coach has been pushed on the low loader and the lorry driver is securing it for its road journey

The "new" coach was brought back to Llanfair Caereinion by the diesel for all to admire

Throughout this exercise the work was assisted by Lucy, a beautiful black Labrador with her purple ring toy. The crew would take it in turns to throw her toy but at critical periods she was put into the Welshpool signal box so as to be out of the way.

Click here to see all pictures taken this day