 Engine #8 backs down to collect its train at the passenger platform. |
Tanks
brimming from from the long drink at the
water tower, #8 was finally ready for a second trip up the mountain. There was not a
moment to spare. Departure was now only seven minutes away by timetable, and I
didn't see how the crew could possibly make it back to the train, couple up, perform their
brake tests and board their passengers in the allotted time. However, I
underestimated the skill of the VoR's professional trainmen. The instant the fireman
completed his watering, he whipped the cap back down onto the engine's tank, leapt down to
the pilot and trotted back around to the footplate. With three urgent toots on the
whistle, the driver set the big tank engine into reverse motion and hustled back toward
the platform. Coupling and hooking up air hoses was but the work of an instant.
(Unlike the Talyllyn, the VoR uses automatic couplers, modified versions of a design
created by Norwegian engineer Carl Pihls for the first general-use narrow gauge railway in
the world, the Hamar-Elverum line of 1862). The guard was efficiency himself as he
punched tickets and sorted his passengers into the various compartments. In moments,
all was in readiness.
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 Moments before departure, our driver contemplates the tall hills he and the fireman must shortly conquer. |
Just
before setting out, the driver had time
for one last contemplative look toward the tall hills he and the fireman would shortly
have to conquer. With the final seconds ticking away, I scrambled around the engine
to the first carriage of the train, and settled myself into a comfortable
compartment. The guard punched my ticket and secured my door against an
unintentional opening while the train was in motion, and then scrambled back to his own
compartment at the rear of the train. And then we were off.
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| Our
rearmost carriage had hardly cleared the
platform before the driver had us up to track speed: designed to take seven heavily-loaded
carriages up 2% grades, the powerful 2-6-2 was challenged not at all by starting four cars
on the flat. Under a tall column of steam shooting up and then drifting off the the
left, we clattered out through the coach yards and on past the engine shed. Just
before we cleared the yard limits a tall, lower-quadrant semaphore signal gave us a
parting salute: a GWR benediction for the journey ahead.
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 Classic GWR lower-quadrant semaphore signal salutes trains passing through the yard limits at Aberystwyth. |
The
semaphore marked the end of yard running,
and now the driver opened the throttle even further. #8's harsh panting soon relaxed
to a comfortable chant, and we rattled briskly along the level floor of the broad Rheidol
valley. North of the tracks the manicured fields of the Aberystwyth rugby club
gleamed in the afternoon sun; to the south, the buildings of Aberystwyth had already given
way to sheep pastures populated with ewes and sprinkling of new spring lambs. After
a mile or so, buildings crowded the right-of-way again, including a towering abandoned
natural gas plant. This was Llanbadarn, once the first small town on the Rheidol's
timetable, now an industrialized suburb of Aberystwyth. As we passed through the
outskirts of town the engine's whistle broke into a shrill scream. Moments later, we
were rattling across a paved highway, with modern cars and trucks waiting obediently on
either side for the our steam locomotive and wooden carriages to pass. Diesel
lorries waiting on a steam train: the very sight put me in a fine, madcap, cheerful mood.
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