Didcot Railway Centre is inviting visitors to its Autumn Steam Gala on 23 and 24 September, which will feature special guest Great Western locomotive no.4953, Pitchford Hall.

The gala will also feature photographic displays, including Great Western Railway 4-6-0 class engines which, it says, “may include” Pendennis Castle, King Edward 2, Cookham Manor, Hinterton Hall, Burton Agnes Hall and Drysllwyn Castle.

Steam locos in operation at the gala include:

• Hall Class loco, No 4953 ‘Pitchford Hall’ on loan from Epping Ongar Railway
• No: 1340 ‘Trojan’ – the oldest working Great Western Railway engine, built in 1897.

  

• No. 4079 ‘Pendennis Castle’, completed at Swindon in February 1924 and returned to traffic at Didcot Railway Centre in April 2022.
• No 2409 ‘King George’ (the Centre’s newest finished restoration project), originally built in May 1942.

The event will feature goods workings as well as passenger trains. There will be demonstrations of the seventy-foot turntable in action, and the opportunity to see train crew coaling the locos under the newly restored Grade II Listed 1932 coal stage. A coal truck will be propelled up the steep incline to the coal stage. These are all sights that were commonplace at the steam depot in GWR days.

The centre will also demonstrate its original fifty-ton hoist in use to add and remove a bogey. There are limited spaces for this, and visitors must book separately from the rest of the event.

Didcot Railway Centre’s site includes painstakingly restored buildings, carriages and wagons. Visitors can learn about the development of railways and get up close to the locomotives in the spacious Engine Shed. which has changed little since being built in 1932. Visitors may even climb onto the footplate of some of the locos.

Visitors may also walk, or travel on the branch line, to the Transfer Shed, where they can view track from Brunel’s Broad Gauge railway with replica locomotives and carriages.

The Carriage Shed will also be open, and houses coaches dating from Victorian times to the 1940s, including the VIP Saloon that is believed to have been used by General Eisenhower when preparing for D-Day, and was later used in the GWR Royal Train!

Tickets are available here. Didcot Railway Centre is not asking members to pay a fee, but does welcome donations, pointing out that the costs of steaming four locomotives are significant.