34046 'Braunton' crossing Capel's Mill viaduct

I happened to see a photo of a steam train tour a few days ago which reminded me to check whether there would b any visiting our valley. When I checked the Rail Advent site I was surprised but pleased to see a tour would be travelling from Cardiff to London Paddington and coming up the Golden Valley.

The company organising the tour is called Steam Dreams, and this event was the last of five consecutive days of travel behind different engines on each day. The engine today was no 34046, ‘Braunton’, which is a West Country pacific designed by Oliver Bulleid to haul mostly express passenger trains, as well as some freight trains, on the Southern Region. 

I checked the timings on the Real Time Train service and found it was expected in Stroud station at about 2-50pm today, and was only about four minutes late. I chose this viaduct as it was an easy place for me to get to and I knew I would be able to see it pass reasonably close by. The viaduct crosses the River Frome and the Thames and Severn canal, and some of the brick buildings are the remnants of Capel’s Mill which was existing on the site before the railways were invented using the water power of the river. It is only abut four hundred yards from the platforms in Stroud station through which it had just passed.

I took my camera but chose to film a video using my iPhone on very basic settings. I have posted the video here on YouTube which you might like to see. I selected a single frame from the video and imported it into Lightroom to create this Blip. I don’t yet know how to colour correct the video footage, but will try to learn that in due course.