Roadshow Reports

Another very enjoyable long weekend at Doncaster Race Course, one of my favourite venues, we’re lucky to get to go there twice a year. The highlight for me was our young member Jack (almost 13) getting his first live steam loco.

Jack came to Doncaster in February with his grandma Maria, Jack is a railway enthusiast and a loves live steam and his knowledge for one so young is amazing. His grandma wanted to get him a surprise 13th birthday present, his first live steam loco. We recommended a Mallard set and so I spent some time looking for the right one.

Having found a really good set that had a best been steamed a couple of times, I knew this was the one for Jack. The loco was thoroughly checked over by Nick and myself. All we had to do now was work out how we could make it a surprise.

The first complication was getting the Mallard set, less loco, to Jack’s grandma’s home in Bridlington. As they were travelling by train it would be too big and heavy to carry. We arranged that, by me taking the set to the Gauge 1 event we were attending at Loughborough in April, handing it over to Adrian, who took it on to Bridlington and delivered it whilst Jack was at school.

All good so far, now to the handover at Doncaster. Jack arrived first thing Saturday; I met him and said we had an almost unused Mallard that needed running in, would he like to do that, of course he would. After the first steaming and cooling down, I said to Jack it was time to water and oil that Mallard and continue the running in process, whilst this was going on he had asked me was this Mallard for sale, I was somewhat non-committal, Nick in the meantime wrote Jacks name on the inside of the coal cover from the tender. As I asked Jack to remove the cover for watering I said what’s that written on the cover, well . . . to see his face was an absolute picture, he recognised straight away that the loco was for him. You will see from the pictures below he could not have been happier. I would also add that Charles, who is a quite brilliant artist, painted a one off

birthday card for Jack depicting Mallard at speed on express duty, tremendous.

The rest of the show went well, for the first time we were located downstairs by the front escalator, it was great to see Jimmy again, we don’t see him as often these days, he does have a long way to come, all the way from West Wales.

I’ve attached a few more pictures this time with appropriate comments.

Maurice