34046 – Braunton sets off up the Golden Valley

I was surprised when my casual online enquiry about any steam train tours resulted in news of this train. Saphos Tours had organised a circular steam excursion from London Paddington to Worcester, via Oxfordshire and Evesham, and a return trip coming via Gloucester and our Golden Valley to join the western main line at Swindon. This morning I checked the railway information and saw that this one-off trip did actually set off from London. We made plans to drive all of four hundred yards down the hill from our house to the bottom of the valley at Bowbridge, where the railway line starts its ascent of the beautiful Golden Valley to Sapperton Bank. The slope gets very steep there as it to cross over the top of the Cotswold hills through a long tunnel.

We arrived a few minutes early to find here was already an assembly of serious steam train watchers on the railway bridge below Butterow (apparently one couple came all the way from Bath, about thirty miles away). I found a suitable spot on the edge of the bridge where a very friendly man made room for me to use my camera. I checked the train time information website on my phone and it reported the train had been three minutes early when it left Gloucester. We heard a faraway whistle followed buy a louder one a short while later. That meant the engione was approaching Stroud station which is about two hundred yards to the left of the brick building lit by the sun in the picture.

Then nothing happened until we saw some smoke over the trees between us and the station. The man who had made room for me turned out to be a volunteer engine driver at the Gloucester Warwickshire Railway north of Cheltenham and he explained what was happening when the engine suddenly set off a vertical eruption of steam. It turned out after a few minutes that there was a problem of people trespassing on the line at Frampton Mansell near to Sapperton bank and for safety the train had been held at a red signal at Stroud station. After a few minutes the smoke and steam began to move and the train slowly approached us. It was a pity as normally steam trains are working at their hardest at this point in order to build up speed for the steep slopes ahead, making a lot of noise. The benefit to us was that we saw the train for longer.

The last carriage of the train has just crossed Capel's Mill viaduct over the River Frome and the Thames and Severn Canal. Directly beneath it is my favourite place to take photos of white throated dippers and kingfishers.

Engines of this type don't often come through here, so I was rather pleased to see it. This 'West Country' class of Bulleid Pacifics were what I saw every day at my local main line station in Surrey when I was growing up in the 1950s.