After a short interlude – 3 The Severn Valley Railway

On 23/5/70, the SVR ran its first official train as a newly revived heritage railway on the section between Bridgnorth and Hampton Loade. I don’t have exact dates for our first visit there but we must have called in very soon after the Light Railway Order had been granted. This meant that the first passenger carrying and revenue earning trains could then be operated. Trains on the day we visited were hauled by No. 43106 and No. 3205. The photos give the feel of an early open day or gala day, but I don’t remember if it was an inaugural event. It felt like you could walk wherever you wanted to as long as you did not get directly in the way of a moving train.

I took quite a lot of colour slides to mark the occasion. Some will remember the lengthy scenario involved. You bought a 24 or 36 exposure reel of Kodachrome II film at the chemist. After use, you put it into the pre-prepared envelope that had been enclosed with the initial purchase and sent it off to a film processing laboratory, carefully marked with your own name and address. If you had been careful winding the film onto and off the spool in the camera, you might be rewarded with a free 37^th card-mounted image in the yellow plastic slide box, when it arrived through the letterbox a few days later. This differed from the processing arrangements for black and white or colour prints, and the latter were still much more expensive. For both these options, completed films were also wound back from the spool and into the film casing manually, but were then taken back to the chemist. Your prints were then picked up from the shop after an interval of a few days to allow for the developing time. I took my first slides in 1965, but I still alternated with b/w prints thereafter, right through to the end of steam in 1968. 

Our first SVR visit is on a colour slide film developed in July 1970. I had always thought previously that we had gone there in April of that year, though the SVR’s own website suggests it was likely to have been May onwards. The ex-GWR panier tank, spotless and in authentic livery but without a number plate, was Class 57xx No. 5786, acquired the year before by the Worcester Locomotive Society and shortly due to be on its way to Bulmer’s siding at Hereford.