At the start of the year, as I often do, I set myself a few photographic challenges for the year ahead. The first was to shoot little blue Scottish steam engine № 828 over at the Spa Valley Railway, which I did at the end of January. The third was a do-over from last year, which was to shoot a fireworks display, something that will likely have to wait until the autumn. The second was to visit the Swanage Railway for one of their steam galas. Not often one to hang around when the mood takes me, just a week after attending the Bluebell Railway Spring Gala, I headed down to Dorset to spend the day chasing trains.
There was a decent lineup of locomotives in the offing, which appealed to me in a couple of important ways: firstly, of the seven engines due to run, I only had decent shots of two of them, but secondly and perhaps most importantly, one of them was blue.
My tour guide for the day would once again be Chailey Stowe, who had escorted me around Spa Valley. I may have visited the Swanage Railway many many times over the years, since I was a small boy, but I don’t know all of the best spots to shoot it. Joining us would be 21C Photography, who was also unfamiliar with the railway.
Our first spot for the day was a field just outside of the village of Corfe Castle. There, in a bit of a rerun from the previous week, we bumped into both The Southerner and SouthEast Classic Rail, meaning good conversation ensued whilst we waited for the train. Soon, 34070 Manston came dramatically round the corner.
I have definitely seen Manston before, but usually she’s just been parked around Swanage station, and never in steam. I’ve also seen plenty of rebuilt Bulleid Pacifics in steam before, such as 34059 Sir Archibald Sinclair, 34028 Eddystone, 35028 Clan Line, or 34046 Braunton, but this also represents the first time I’ve seen an unrebuilt, air smoothed ‘spam can’ Bulleid – at least, to my recollection. It’s always possible I saw one when I was younger and not paying as much attention.
Manston is a grubby engine by intent – although she’s not as grubby as she used to be – which makes a bit of as refreshing change considering so many steam locomotives in preservation are kept immaculate.
Chailey’s usual tactic for a gala involves hopping in a car and jumping all over the line. I love the thrill of the chase but it can be a bit hectic at times. This time wasn’t a big rush, as we headed back down the line to Harmans Cross, which when I first visited would have been the end of the line. Just outside the station the line passes under a bridge, giving us a good view of the next train, headed by U class 31806.
As it was a gala, the railway were running trains beyond the normal end of their line, up the extension most of the way towards Wareham and the River Frome. This opened up some extra shooting spots beyond Norden station. So we headed up the line towards Creech Bottom, where we waited for what we were hoping to be a noisy run from 6880 Betton Grange. Before that, though, we actually managed to beat 31806 to this part of the line, so we got to see her go past. She wasn’t working very hard – this part of the track favours locomotives heading in the other direction – but it made a nice photo regardless.
This was actually the same train we were there to see – services up this way are top-and-tailed, so there is a locomotive at each end, and you can just about see Betton Grange at the back of the shot above. After a little wait, the train came back around the corner, making a racket as promised.
Then it was another slight race back to Harmans Cross again to beat Betton Grange there, as she would be coming through on an express service.
At this point we all jumped in the Southerner’s car to head back to Corfe Castle for another one of the visiting locomotives I hadn’t seen yet, 68067.
Well, that’s not strictly true – 68067 visited the Bluebell Railway last year for their Branch Line Gala, but failed before the event, so she was only on static display. This time, she was pulling a goods demonstration set.
After a quick hop back to Harmans Cross to return to our previously scheduled cars, we headed up to another section of the extension, Arland House Crossing, just up from Norden. Myself, Chailey, the Southerner, SouthEast Classic Rail and 21C got there with a bit of time to spare for some jaw jacking before the next train came along, headed by 34072 257 Squadron.
Like the other trains heading up the extension, this service was top-and-tailed, with Manston on the rear ready to pull the train back again.
We then headed back to Corfe Common, where we started the day, to catch Betton Grange again. This time the light was on the other side of the line, and we were cutting things a bit fine, necessitating a bit of a run and ultimately shooting from the bridge rather than in a field.
As quickly as we arrived we left, headed for Wilderness Crossing, a spot just before Harmans Cross on the way out of Swanage. This was an odd spot for me, because it’s on a public footpath I’d unknowingly driven past it countless times over the years, accessed by what looks like somebody’s front gate. At the crossing we would wait for the two locomotives I’d not yet seen, but whilst we waited, Manston came by in the other direction, approaching Swanage. It was a coasting spot for locomotives heading that way so not worth filming, but it was definitely worth a few photos.
I really like the way the line of trees runs parallel with the train.
Soon we were greeted by a cacophony of noise as WD152 Rennes and 68067 rounded the corner, giving me exactly the sort of noise and textured exhaust that makes me tingle.
Rennes was the locomotive I was most excited to see, based mainly on the fact she is blue with white walled wheels. At this point I had never seen an Austerity ‘bucket’ giving it the beans, and now I know that she not only looks good, but performs well too.
The challenge with this spot is that, when on the right side of the track for the light, you have a very narrow angle to shoot, because right by the crossing is an equipment cabinet and a sign, so if you mistime things you can end up missing the shot entirely. So narrow was the window that had the sun decisively disappeared behind a suitably large cloud that we could be sure it was staying away, we’d have switched to the other side of the line. A big patch of blue opened up though, so on this side we stayed. I got a bit lucky with this next shot in missing the pitfalls, but I think I got a bit too much of the trees in the frame.
But the next shot, which in theory is a better shot of the loco in terms of framing and position, is ruined by the big box in the way.
Looking back at the video of this run, it looks like 68067 is not putting any effort in and letting Rennes do all the work. Given the performance, I’m happy for it.
Having seen this run, our plans changed a bit, because it had become very apparent that these two locomotives were the ones to see.
First, though, it was back to Creech Bottom, for our original plan of seeing the two buckets come back down the line. Being tank engines, it’s not inauthentic to see them running bunker-first, and after their last run, we weren’t going to miss them. They looked every bit as smoky as they rounded the corner.
Rennes was clearly still the one after all the attention.
I assure you they were every bit as exciting going backwards.
We headed off back towards Corfe Castle, and a spot I had only seen whilst glimpsing through hedgerows when driving past previously. It offered a great view of the line curving through the countryside with the castle in the background, a quite ridiculously picturesque scene.
We stayed here for a few shots, the first being yet another return of the buckets Rennes and 68067 heading bunker-first towards Swanage. Unfortunately the sun went in jut as this shot happened.
I decided to edit one of the shots from slightly earlier in this pass into black and white, but given the scenery I decided to use a flatter-looking monochrome filter to try to emulate the style of old photos from back in the day.
Next was 257 Squadron pulling the goods set up away from Swanage. This isn’t the most exciting shot as the locomotive is coasting but the sun happened to come out over the castle just as she went by.
Not long after it was time for Betton Grange to head back towards Swanage., and unlike with the buckets, this time the sun came out at just the right time (at least on the locomotive – unfortunately not on the castle).
As she moved around more I zoomed back in for a better shot of the engine.
From here it was just a short drive through Corfe Castle (the village), past Corfe Castle (the station) and back into the shadow of Corfe Castle (the castle) to get a shot of another locomotive coming across Corfe Viaduct – this time, 31806.
After posting the above shot on Instagram, the man on the footplate approached me and asked for a copy of the photo. I was only happy to oblige – I’m always happy to give my shots to crews and railways.
From here we had a tight turnaround to get to Dickers Crossing in order to catch the buckets on their last run of the day. In the end, we lost our bottle and diverted to New Barn. It wasn’t ideal, as we would be on the wrong side of the goldening light, but better that than miss them entirely.
In the end there was no reason to panic, as the locos set off a good 10 or 15 minutes late from Swanage after an extended water stop, but we’d made our choice and had to stick with it.
The light was certainly pretty nice as the locomotives rounded the corner into view.
Soon, however, the light was against us, save for a little patch on the front of the loco.
As soon as the engines were past, it was time to improvise with the light we were given.
Then it was on to Dickers Crossing anyway, to see 257 Squadron.
By now the light had turned lovely and golden.
This meant some more improvisation and shooting into the light in order to get some of the much sought after glint off the locomotive.
Then it was on to our final stop of the day, and fittingly it would be the near enough the spot where we started, Corfe Common, albeit on the other side of the line for the light, what left there was of it.
Whilst we waited for the service we were there for – a doubleheader of the spam cans – 31806 came by, tender-first and light engine, on her way back to Swanage. I hadn’t intended on shooting this (in no small part because it wasn’t on our plan for the day, so I had no idea it was happening), but I couldn’t resist once I realised how she was catching the light.
Unfortunately by the time the spam cans had arrived, the sun had properly set, and the golden glow of the evening had gone. Which Alamo meant it was starting to get a bit cold.
And with that, our day was done. There was still some nighttime beer trains to run, but these were a bit late for me, and would be in the dark anyway so not very good for photographing purposes. Instead, after a bit of lovely conversation, it was back to the cars for a lift back to my car to reunite with my family for a 2.5 hour drive home.
I loved my first Swanage Railway gala. It was a fantastic but hectic day, but I enjoyed all of it. Apart, perhaps, from that one jog up a hill to see Betton Grange. Now I know a bunch of the spots, I will definitely be keeping a close eye on the lineup for the Autumn Gala, because I will definitely be returning.
As ever, there are a few more shots than the ones covered above in the gallery below.
Creative Splurges 