A catch up, the first of 2024

Here we are at the of the third week of January, where has those 3 weeks gone. We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and all the best for the New year.

Lets have a catch up on things, we kept busy through the end of the season, I think last time we blogged we were at Singleton, that was in August! Since then Victoria has been to the Balls Cross rally, which as always is a great little event. I say little, but it is becoming bigger and bigger each year, with 12 or 13 full size steam engines this year and array of other exhibits, a great event. We then moved back to Amberley Museum for their Miniature weekend, where we steamed our 6″ Foden and of course we steamed up Victoria too!

With a couple of weekends where we weren’t steaming up we took the time to do a few jobs to the engines. Victoria had her safety valves looked at and fixed, our Foden having front lights fitted, with the darker afternoons coming we thought it would be a good idea and they work well. We also helped with the museum’s engine, the West Sussex Roller “Joan”, she had a clean from Seren and also made a bit more progress on Nick and Hannah’s lovely little living van.

With a few days off work to take a trip to Kempton Steam Museum, what a fantastic museum this is, with two huge steam engines, only one is fully working and they do steamings throughout the year, it is well worth a visit. They also stock Wendy’s great children’s story books, Victoria’s Torton Tales.

Then another event at Amberley, their Autumn gathering, always well attended by exhibitors and the visiting public. We had all the engines in steam, Victoria, the Foden, along with the West Sussex roller “Joan” and Nick and Hannah’s Wallis Advance “Wally”. It was a great day, so many people visited and a bonus was the weather, which was great to see.

Then Halloween, Amberley have a event on the Saturday evening, where they decorate the museum with all ghostly things, the staff and volunteers dress up and we decorated the engines and trailer. The weather was not with us, very wet and chilly but the public still came, we thought that no-one would want to ride in the trailer, how wrong could we be, there was a stream of people all evening, in fact we had to say at gone 9pm when the event finished, sorry we have closed. It was a great event, great atmosphere despite the weather.

Now the days were shorter and we turned our thoughts to bringing Victoria, living van and the trailer home, but hold on, time for one last event maybe! Just a few days later and they would be on the move, this time we were off to our friends yard where we would be going out for a pub run, this was to celebrate Lloyd’s birthday and our friend, Stephen Hubbuck’s 80th Birthday. So up early and off to Sussex again, we steamed Victoria, the Foden and joining us was Stephen’s engine “Bess”, with the Russell family on the footplate we set off to the pub. We took our trailer along which was filled with people so again another great day enjoying the autumn weather, friends and the engines. With Wendy and Lloyd taking Victoria as Jack was keen to road our Foden to the pub, it was a very successful trip for both engines and on our return journey Nick took the steering wheel next to Lloyd on Victoria’s footplate. A great day.

Then time for Victoria to finally come back to Hampshire, she hasn’t really been home since June 2022 as she has either been at Amberley, then she spent time in Michael Lugg’s yard, then back to Amberley and out on the road in between, lets hope our neighbours will be pleased to see her.

Saturday 26th November Victoria, living van and trailer were back home in Hampshire, we have had a great 2023 in Sussex but it is lovely to see them all back here at home in Hampshire.

We were hoping to get out with Victoria in December but sadly we just didn’t have the time, with work commitments, older family to look after and of course Christmas, we ran out of time. We did get to steam the Foden at Amberley one Sunday for their Christmas fair event and then again on New Years Eve when they opened to the public.

The Christmas and New Year passed and we decided we would get Victoria out and go for a run with her, this was arranged for Sunday 7th January, we invited a few friends to ride in the trailer, Jack contacted a couple of local engine owners to see if they wanted to meet at a pub somewhere and a plan was put into action. The day arrive, dry but very cold, people turned up to ride in the trailer, some of our crew, The Pidgleys and Pip the dog, Chris Forbes joined us, Teri came along too, sadly a couple had to drop out due to train cancellations but soon we had loaded all those on the trailer. Off to Petersfield we went, we always like to cause a bit of havoc in the town so we made sure we did a couple of laps through the centre of the town, there was the farmers market on, we didn’t know this until we got there. We decided to pop to Tesco for some shopping, a coffee and a meal deal! Then back towards home but before that we popped into the pub, The Drovers, at the top of the hill where we met up with Michael and Ellie with their Marshall Q class, also a few friends had come out to see us and it turned out to be a fabulous afternoon.

This weekend just gone we had a spontaneous steam up on Sunday, with the weather turning very cold we decided before we drained Victoria down lets just steam up one more time and make sure all is well and have a quick chuff around the local village roads, we had a wonderful few hours with her and all is good.

So now we look forward to the new season and getting Victoria and the Foden back out for 2024.

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