Helen Stephenson's North East England Holiday Pictures - October, 2007 - Beamish Pockerley Waggonway

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We emerged from the woods and crossed the road to the 1825 portion of Beamish, which consists of Pockerley Manor and the Pockerley Waggonway. We realised that with the Township still to see that we were likely to have insufficient time to see everything, so we chose not to follow the path up to Pockerley Manor, but of course we couldn't resist the lure of the steam locomotive down on the Pockerley Waggonway!

These pictures were captured using a Pentax K10D digital SLR camera.

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					The Pockerley Waggonway and Pockerley Manor are close together on the Beamish site, but we didn't have time to get any closer to Pockerley Manor than this informative plaque about the Georgian North. I've deliberately oversized the full-size version of this picture to enable you to read the small print if you wish to.

We absolutely couldn't pass up the opportunity to see the Pockerley Waggonway, where a steam engine was working and it was possible to take a short ride. One of the buildings at the Waggonway had this very impressive weather vane on top. I thought about flipping it in Photoshop so that the letters were the right way around, but decided instead to leave it as I saw it.

The steam engine was standing at a small platform, which it was necessary to cross the tracks to get to. The train's operators alighted onto the platform and inspected the engine between runs.



The journey on the train was only short, and we had the opportunity to see the train in action as well as riding on it.

					During our ride, the best pictures were to be had on the return run, when the engine operator faced his passengers.

My favourite picture from the Pockerley Waggonway is this portrait of the engine driver. He was unsmiling, as he wasn't posing at all - just doing his job. I think it's a credit to the shake reduction feature of the Pentax K10D that I managed to get this picture while standing up in a jiggling carriage - and also that the carriage and the steam engine must have kindly co-operated and jiggled in the same direction just as I pushed the button!