Buckfastleigh, South Devon Railway

After much discussion we decided to travel to Buckfastleigh to travel on the South Devon Railway to Totnes and back.

So that's another heritage steam line ticked off. It's a delightful little ex Great Western branch line running alongside the River Dart powered by those ubiquitous Pannier Tank locomotives, for which as readers of this journal will know, I have a great affection.

Pannier tank engines have an exceedingly long pedigree with the earliest examples built at the end of the 19thC. With Grouping in 1923 the Great Western Railway continued with the Pannier tank introducing their own designs,

This example, on the South Devon Railway is a true GWR locomotive with outside cylinders built in 1934. It's a Class 1366 loco, with only 6 examples of the class built. After Nationalisation in 1948, British Railways continued to build Panniers, based on the GWR designs. 1638 on the KESR is from the British Railways era.

When we arrived at Totnes we walked into town for a bite to eat and a wander around and were very impressed by the centre of this little town. A pleasant main street and a market place occupied by a variety of stalls.

We didn't leave ourselves much time to get back for the 3.00pm train to Buckfastleigh but we made it with seconds to spare. The museum at Buckfastleigh station was very interesting as was my visit to the station's Signalbox where I had a warm welcome from the signalman on duty who was delighted to show his box off to a fellow signalman.

I had to be dragged away from the box for a quick trip to Buckfast Abbey which was also a very interesting place; gardens and a church were open to the public and free to enter. There's an active Benedictine Monastery at Buckfast which was formed in 1902, created on the ruins of a site whose past went back a thousand years and was dissolved, of course, by Henry VIII.

Found a very nice pub called The Bowd near Sidmouth that served an excellent carvery for £10 but needed a late evening walk along Seaton seafront in the gathering gloaming to help the meal settle down.