It was only a few weeks ago that I was trying to refute that I’m not some closet trainspotter, yet here I am at Didcot Railway Centre looking at steam trains. To be fair, I was there so that my granddaughter could see Paddington (the bear) but that does still seem to leave me on dodgy ground!
It has been a very long time since I’d last been there – probably about 25 years since my children were roughly the same age as my grandchildren are now. I have no recollection of what it was like then (other than cold) and so cannot make a comparison but I suspect it has come on quite a bit in the intervening years.
The first thing to say was that the Paddington draw was a bit of a damp squib. It was a bloke dressed up in a costume and a poorly signed trail where you could collect postcards. That said my eldest grandchild did enjoy having her photo taken with Paddington so that’s the main thing.
Full Steam Ahead
Unlike other heritage railways, Lightwater Valley, for example, Didcot occupies a small triangle of land next to the main railway station and line and has only a very small piece of track for demonstration runs. We did this first much to the bemusement of the three year old who couldn’t understand why we weren’t getting off at the end of the outward leg!
More impressive was the sheer number of engines and carriages that are on the site. They are literally everywhere you look and the main shed must have had nine or ten engines all beautifully restored. Another shed was full of carriages, again in a state that they can only last have been on the day they left the factory. Some of these you could go in, others only peer through the windows.
Elsewhere there was an exhibition on signalling which included a board showing the tracks and points from Bristol which lit up showing the progress of the trains and a small museum for smaller items.
The group of us had an enjoyable time there but, Paddington (the bear) aside, I wasn’t sure what exactly the point of a visit was. I recognise that the importance of securing these marvellous pieces of engineering for future generations but sat there static squeezed together in the shed was hard to see them in all their glory. It perhaps isn’t helped by the restriction on the amount of track that they have there too.
Post Visit Survey
The same evening we had been in Didcot, they sent me a link to a feedback survey they wanted me to complete. This included the following question: “What was the weather like during your visit?” with options of Sunny, Cloudy, and Rainy and you could choose only one. The problem was that this being England we had ALL of those options at some point during the day! It needed a “Yes” option!
