Steam train in The View from the Terrace

I was just outside getting the washing in when a steam train went by. I love living next to a railway and seeing the trains pass and wondering where they are going to and what the people on them are going for, but when a steam train goes by it is really special. It only happens a few times a year. Unfortunately we can’t see them properly from the garden now as the trees have grown too high, but hearing the familiar puffa puffa and seeing the smoke pouring out and then the sound they make as they approach the tunnel all took me right back to my childhood.

Mum used to take me on the train to visit my aunt in Wolverhampton. I was alway fascinated by our local station at Shrewsbury as it is partly built over the river and you could see the river below between the sleepers. Then the big steam train would come in and we would get on and it would whisk us away to Auntie’s. I would get restless and Mum would make up things that the train was saying, ‘Hear we go, here we go’ ‘Hurry up, hurry up’ ‘Nearly there, nearly there’ Diesels are just not the same.

I knew this train would be passing soon as I saw it go the other way this morning. I was in the bedroom then and I managed to grab the camera but was only in time to photograph the steam above the trees.