Bluebell Railway: Giants of Steam 2025

Once again, I ventured out lineside with frequent collaborators Sharpthorne Steam and 72B Photography. Unfortunately, we weren’t blessed with the best weather, and the day proved to be one with an unbreaking cover of cloud. Although this did flatten the pop of the images we’d capture, it did bring one unintended benefit, in the sense that it then no longer mattered whether the light was coming from the right direction for the shots we were after, and what would be traditionally ‘morning’ or ‘afternoon’ shots could be taken whenever we found ourselves there, rather than planning our day around it.

After collecting our hi-viz vests and booking on, we made our way to the Tremains foot crossing by car, then headed north to a spot just north of Lindfield Wood to photograph the first run of the day. There we also bumped into another lineside photographer I knew from a previous training course. We all waited relatively close to each other, bemoaning the flat grey light we had been dealt, and waited for the first service of the gala. Before long, 6880 Betton Grange came chuffing round the corner.

As I learned on a previous outing, I am now shooting in Manual mode, setting my shutter and aperture, and letting the camera find an appropriate ISO setting. In this case it was very warranted – with the amount of light available, shooting in Aperture Priority would have resulted in too low a shutter speed for a sharp shot. I seem to have settled on settings of 1/500th of a second shutter speed to capture time with minimal motion blur, and f/4 or f/4.5 as a decent compromise that still lets in a decent amount of light, whilst allowing for a depth of field that keeps the locomotive in focus yet allowing some of the trailing coaches to become nicely defocussed. The main thing to be mindful of with these settings is in very bright conditions, they will likely overexpose your shots – not that that would be a problem on this grey day.

Our trio then headed south. Our plan was to get to Freshfield Bank in time for the third service of the day, and try to get into a good position for the second service on the way. As it happened, we reached the Broken Bridge just ahead of that second service, so we decided to use this as our backdrop for 2999 Lady of Legend.

I still haven’t quite gotten an angle I’m happy with at this location. I think I frequently shoot too wide, which is intended to capture more of the locomotive, but loses too much of the scene itself. I need to remember to take a page out of Sharpthorne’s book and shoot more straight on.

We made it to Freshfield in time for the third service of the day. This would be headed by 60163 Tornado, the first of the new build locomotives. It has been near enough exactly 10 years since I last saw Tornado in the flesh, when she came through the town where I used to live on a mainline railtour. You may have also seen her elsewhere before: she featured in my all-time favourite Top Gear race in 2011 when she sadly came second to a Jaguar in a race from London to Edinburgh.

As is often the case when shooting from a spot like this, I faced a choice in editing between the portrait, more front-on shot you see above, or the wider landscape shot below.

At this point Sharpthorne Steam left our group to head back north to the Broken Bridge for a shot they wanted to get, leaving 72B and I to continue south to photograph the next service, headed by 32424 Beachy Head, emerging from the trees on the climb up to Freshfield Bank.

At this point, 72B and I went our separate ways too: 72B back up to Freshfield to get a shot there, whilst I continued trekking south, planning on shooting the next train at my generally lucky spot on the corner out of Ketches Wood. That train would be Betton Grange on her second run of the day. The autumnal colours were fantastic at this corner; the ferns were every shade from green to brown, making for a brightly coloured foreground. I’m amazed at how much and how quickly the lineside scenery changes. Over the last year I’ve seen it go from barren to blue to massively overgrown to all cut back in the space of a few months.

As ever for this spot, I made use of my telephoto.

I headed back north to reunite with 72B, and we continued up the line towards Broken Bridge. We decided to grab shots of the next train, Lady of Legend, rounding the corner just before the bridge. Once again my telephoto was put to use.

As you can probably see, I’ve made use of a preset in Lightroom to emphasise some of the autumnal colours a little more. Perhaps a touch stylistic, but I really found myself loving the result, and you’ll see it being used more in this post.

As Lady continued round the corner, as got a better side-on view.

Personally I prefer the first dramatic shot as she rounds the corner, but as ever I am indecisive and often a poor judge of my own work.

We carried on north, electing to position ourselves in Lindfield Wood for Tornado’s second run of the day.

We again ventured north (you’ll have noticed, these excursions, and by extension the my posts about them, are often little more than a sequence of picking a spot, photographing a train, and then moving on to another spot for the next one, repeated all day, and never is that more true than a busy gala day) to shoot Beachy Head passing over Waterworks Bridge.

This is where the greyness of the day worked in our favour, as we found a couple of people already on the traditional side of the track up an embankment, leaving us able to shoot on the other side of the line.

Once again I’ve used a preset to bring out the autumn in the shot, although I’ve dialled it back a bit compared to the Lady of Legend shots above. It still had the effect of helping bring out the red of Beachy’s headboard.

This did give me the idea to edit a closeup shot of her front with some selective colouring, removing all but the red from the shot and giving it a bit of contrast for good measure.

We continued north (I really need to come up with a better way of segueing from shot to shot than a few basic variants of ‘we continued in a cardinal direction’, but today is not that day, so here we are) and eventually reunited with Sharpthorne Steam at Three Arch Bridge, a spot a little south of Horsted Keynes station. There were a few other lineside photographers here too, but we all found a way to coexist. For the next train up, which was Betton Grange, everyone else elected to shoot on the east (or down) side of the line, but I’ve never really been very happy with my results from that spot, so I trod my own path and put myself on the west side, where I’ve had better luck. The only downside was a few of the shots required the use of Lightroom’s AI removal tool to smite a few bright orange people from my shots.

You’ll have noticed we’ve had a lot of trains going north in this post, and not many going south. The reason is simple: all of the locomotives at this gala faced north, and as the line is mostly uphill in a northerly direction, that’s also the runs where they’re working hardest. Not only do they not need to put in much effort when going south, but they’re also facing backwards, which makes for a generally uninteresting shot. The main thing to watch out for when out on the lineside is to not forget about them completely, because they can sneak up on you. I did, however, make an exception for the next southbound run, which was Tornado. That’s mostly because we were at a bit of the line that was wide enough that I could position myself back from the line and, with my ultra wide angle lens, get a complete portrait shot of quite a sizeable locomotive.

I haven’t really been using my 14-35mm to shoot trains much lately, mostly because I’m finding myself in spots where more zoom is required. I suspect I’d be getting more use out of a 24-105mm lens for this purpose, but that would overlap substantially with my daily shooter 24-70, which I have no intention of giving up. A new lens solves everything, of course, apart from when the people from Canon come to break your knees for unsettled debts.

For the next train up, we all moved to a spot very slightly north of where I shot Betton Grange, making for the lovely sight of no less than five or six hi-viz-clad photographers all standing in a line as Lady of Legend came by.

We were standing on a spot that had previously been a foot crossing, and although the crossing is gone the signs advising safe passage are still there. I used one at both the 65th Anniversary and Diesel galas for southwards-travelling locomotives, and this time I was able to use it for a northbound one.

The final train of the day (at least in daylight hours, but I don’t think any of us were prepared to wait around for three hours for a Golden Arrow service in the dark) was a doubleheader of the newest and oldest locomotives running at the gala – Beachy Head, finished in 2024, leading Tornado, finished in 2008. For this run, we headed back south, to a bendy bit of the track on the exit of Lindfield Wood, a little before Waterworks Bridge. We positioned ourselves on the inside of the second bend hoping for some good angles.

In hindsight, I’m not sure we were in the best spot for this run – we were a bit too front-on to see the doubleheader locomotives in all their glory, and a bit too close to show off the delightfully bendy nature of the track. Luckily, I would be able to remedy both of those issues the following day.

With the last (daylight) train now gone up the line, there was little else to do with the day other than trek back to the foot crossing where we’d entered the line many hours earlier, and head back to Sheffield Park to return our hi-viz vests for the day. Whilst we were there, the Pullman coaches were on platform being prepared for the evening’s Golden Arrow train, and I couldn’t resist a quick snap through one of the windows.

And then all there was to do was return to our respective homes to get some rest ahead of another busy day at the railway (and for me, it would be busier than usual).

When I got home, I looked at my stats for the day. Because I’d started at Tremains foot crossing, a spot pretty much exactly in the middle of Sheffield Park and Horsted Keynes, and then walked almost all of the way south to a spot just outside of Sheffield Park, then back north to a spot just outside Horsted Keynes, and then back to the foot crossing again, I’d basically done near enough the full 4+ mile trek twice. When added up with any other walking I’d done that day, I’d walked over 11 miles, or over 21,000 steps, probably a new record for me at the railway.

Still, there was a whole other day to go.

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Saturday brought more of the same weather – grey, flat, and with a mild risk of rain. Still, as before, this freed us up to shoot without worrying whether the light was coming from the right direction.

Our plan for this day, at least to start with, was focussed a little more around Horsted Keynes. Unusually, the first passenger train of the day would be departing from Horsted and heading north. This meant that after picking up our vests, we made our way to Horsted Keynes, to head north on foot to catch Betton Grange leaving. We made it to a spot just up the line from Horsted House Bridge to wait.

This may well have been the run of the weekend. Noisy and powerful, Grange pulled as few punches as you can on a heritage railway limited to 25mph.

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From there, we we could resume the plan we’d had before we realised the start of the day’s timetable was a bit quirky, so we headed back south to shoot the next train arriving from Sheffield Park on the southern end of the goods yard at Horsted Keynes. I had originally decided to get this shot back when there was still some hope of us having a bright sunny morning, when the light would have been perfect. Even in the flat greyness of the morning the shots came out nicely, although the exhaust from the train was lost a little against the overcast sky.

Our next planned shot was a little further south again. 72B had wanted to replicate a shot I’d taken at Giants the year before, positioned under Three Arch Bridge where you can get a signal in your shot. Sharpthorne and I were happy to oblige. This is another shot where the lack of sun worked in our favour, because this is normally a shot that needs to be done slightly later in the day so the sun is on the correct side of the track. No such concerns today. We managed to position ourselves halfway up a moderately steep embankment with all our kit and not get in each other’s way, which in some ways was an achievement in itself. Soon Tornado was on her way by.

For whatever reason, the Distant signal didn’t go up, despite Tornado being on a nonstop run. In some ways though it made the semaphore signal arrangement a little more interesting.

At this point we had no specific plans for the next run. Without a new spot to rush to, some chatting took place, and I used this opportunity to switch to my relatively new 50mm f/0.95 lens for some artsy shots, starting with the signal we were standing next to.

I am getting used to the fully manual nature of this lens, so much so that when Betton Grange came back south whilst I was shooting, I even had a go at getting a shot of her crew with it.

After that it was back to indulging my artistic side.

I’m loving this lens. As you might be able to see, there are some artefacts around the edges of the images. That’s because it’s technically a crop sensor lens, but I still use it in full frame mode because I think all of the imperfections add to the analogue feel of it.

My artistic itch scratched (there are a few others in the gallery below), we needed to decide where to shoot Beachy Head’s first run of the day, and elected on a spot just before the straight up to Three Arch Bridge, where I’d had good results photographing 34059 Sir Archibald Sinclair at the Branch Line Gala.

Opinions were again expressed over where to go for the next shot, and southwards we went. We positioned ourselves just south of Caseford Bridge, on the embankment on the other side of the line to where we’d shot Beachy Head the day before, for Betton Grange to come by again.

I wasn’t entirely happy with the shots from this spot. One to return to another time to get right.

We positioned ourselves only very slightly down the line for the next Lady of Legend run, just up from Waterworks Bridge.

For the next train we ventured slightly south again, to the curvy bit where we’d shot the doubleheader the previous day. This time I had a better idea for where I wanted to position myself to show off the curviness of the track. Rather than positioning myself on the inside of the second curve, I stood on the outside of the curve, further back where it starts to straighten out a little. From here, you can easily see the s-bend shape of the track. You’re still quite front-on to the locomotive, but the interesting nature of the rest of the scene makes up for it. 72B still positioned themself on the inside curve, but Sharpthorne and I were able to cope with it with some careful framing and, in the case of the images below, some selective Lightroom work when needed.

I’ve shot in this area before on several occasions, and it finally feels like I’ve figured out how to make the best of it.

Next, we headed back north to Horsted Keynes. Although nothing had been officially announced, it was apparent from the timetable that all four locomotives would be at the the station at the same time, which could be a photo opportunity worth seeing. We arrived a good 45 minutes or more before the timetabled gathering, but even so, the field that overlooks the station was starting to get busy. We found a spot at the fence and waited, with a few familiar faces to chat to. Before too long, locomotives slowly started arriving. As trains were approaching from both north and south of the station there was some shunting involved to make sure they were all at the same ends of their trains (and to get Lady of Legend into Platform 1, which is only connected at the north end). Eventually all the locomotives were in place, and the people on the platforms held back as much as possible, making for a nice staged photo opportunity.

It still boggles my mind that the oldest of the locomotives on display here was only completed in 2008.

After 15 minutes or so, the locomotives started to depart. Betton Grange went first.

Lady of Legend was next, departing from Platform 1 – only the second time a train has departed from that platform in preservation (the other being the first service of the day that morning).

Tornado and Beachy Head would then run around and head south back to Sheffield Park in preparation for running another doubleheader.

For that doubleheader, we decided to hop in the car and head out to Freshfield Bank. After realising the shots I’d taken of the same pairing the previous day were too front-on to do justice to the locomotives, I decided to stay on the public side of the fence and shoot from a distance, getting a panning shot that I’ve been wanting to try since I saw some shots taken from this spot about this time last year.

As you can see, due to the length of the two locomotives together, I’ve cropped the shot a bit more dramatically. I’m mostly happy with it, other than I should’ve gotten more of the first coach in frame (I did in an earlier shot, included in the gallery at the end of this post, but the engines did not come out as sharp as I’d like).

By now the sun had near enough set and the light was fading, but there was one more service still to head up the line, pulled by Betton Grange. This time I went back lineside and shot with my telephoto. I hadn’t quite appreciated how little light was left, however, as evidenced by the required ISO in this next shot.

And that was the last running train of the day. Ordinarily that would mean the end of my day too, but I had decided to break my train photo charter duck by attending a night shoot at Sheffield Park, featuring Tornado and Betton Grange.

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We got back to Sheffield Park in good time for some parting chats and for me to get some dinner ahead of the night shoot. Soon I was on Platform 1 alongside 30 or so other photographers, with Tornado posed on Platform 2 with the Blood and Custard coach set. This was a relatively controlled environment: the normal station lights were turned off and some artificial lighting had been set up. We also had a couple of station staff on the platform as models.

With only having a lightweight tripod I’d bought solely for use with my phone, I decided to throw all of my faith into my lens’s and camera’s image stabilisation, and shoot handheld. That’s right, once again I have found myself eschewing the standard rules largely out of laziness. Would I have gotten better results with a tripod, enabling me to use a longer exposure and a lower ISO? Possibly. Am I still happy with the results I got? Absolutely. And shooting without a tripod gave me a lot more flexibility when it came to angles, and shooting over peoples’ shoulders whilst waiting for my ‘proper’ turn. That also gave me the chance to dial in my settings, figuring out a balance of shutter speed and exposure compensation that got the results I was after without pushing the limits of the image stabilisation systems. Once again I shot in Manual, figuring I wanted control over the aperture and shutter speed and could let the camera figure out the ISO.

The hardest challenge in editing was getting the white balance right. I’d foolishly left my camera on auto, which usually is fine, but here it was overcorrecting the tungsten of the light and making things look a bit unnatural.

After a bit of shooting I was a bit more confident in using a third of a second shutter speed to capture the movement of the steam coming from the engine.

After a while of shooting shots from the front of the locomotive, we all moved to the back for some other angles. We still had our station hands to pose.

The crew in Tornado were also asked to poke their heads out of the cab for another pose.

As we finished up shooting with Tornado, I was able to grab a shot with a lot more station in the foreground, including one of the lamps.

With that, we were done shooting Tornado, and Betton Grange was moved into position. To begin with, there were some technical issues with the light being used to illuminate the front of the locomotive, meaning we started out with some moody, artsy shots.

Soon the crew were asked to vent a little steam, making the shoot delightfully moody.

As is often the case when dealing with shots like this, with many, many options for the best-looking plume of steam, I have picked one above – but there are quite a few options in the gallery below.

Soon the front light was fixed, and we got a few ‘cleaner’ shots. Whilst it was nice as an alternative, I definitely preferred the moody shots.

Like the last time, we were then moved to the back of the locomotive for some different angles, and one of the crew was again asked to poke their head out.

I do like the lights from the signals visible in the darkness.

I’m very pleased with the results from this, my first nighttime steam shoot. I managed to get down to half a second exposures whilst handheld which shows the capability of the image stabilisation systems in my equipment. I’d definitely like to do something like this again – but I’m also considering some daytime photography charters next year too.

And with that, my Saturday was over. I got to Sheffield Park at 8am that morning, and I finally left at 10pm, making for quite a long day. Although I had kept the day clear to go out shooting on the Sunday of the gala too, ultimately the weather was not great and I decided the time would be better spent editing the photos I’d already taken.

Much like last year, I would return to the railway a week later for another photographic opportunity. But that, dear reader, is a post for another time.

As always – and especially in the case of the night shoot – I have picked some of my favourite shots for the post above, but there are plenty others in the gallery below. Perhaps your own favourite is down there amongst them?