Shrewsbury Steam Rally (24th - 25th August, 2014)
This is one of a series of pages I have uploaded to illustrate facets of the steam rallies we have attended in the UK. Click here for the 2014 introduction and overall index.
If I had looked only at the Saturday night forecast before setting out, we would have stayed in bed. As it was, there was a car outside, we had booked online tickets and the later forecasts promised better conditions early on. I would have preferred a 07.00 departure but we were still away before 07.30 and Yuehong got a slightly swifter run up the A49 than before. Mindful that we had spent an hour or more on the Shrewsbury bypass and A458 in 2013, we went the 'back way' which got us to the entrance facing the right way spot on 09.30 when the gates were due to open. The ticket queues were horrendous as ever, but with our pre-booked tickets (numbered #90 although bought on Saturday morning) we were inside at 09.35. More importantly there was a milky sun lighting the engines in an extremely attractive manner, not the brilliant sun of 2013's second day but more than acceptable. While most of the engines were in their traditional L shape, the working engines were scattered far and wide as before. In about 90 minutes, I had taken just about all the pictures I needed which was just as well as it was rapidly clouding over. I confess that with a large crowd and correctly anticipated limited sunshine, they leave something to be desired. Later relaxing over a lunch time pint, I heard people saying that it had taken them much more than 2 hours to get in - enough to have totally ruined my day if I had been one of them. The crowd was probably almost as many as would normally attend the two days, the forecast for the second day was dire, I doubt many engines will have moved and more critically, the car park will soon have become unusable.
As one exhibitor said to me 'Onslow Park is the best organised of any rally we go to' and I would find it hard to disagree. So as long as I can avoid the queues in and out (and we were gone just after 14.30), we shall be back each year. Never mind that this is a very conservative rally with a low turnover of engines, even to the extent that most of them were parked up in the same positions that I photographed them in 2013. I can only repeat my 2013 comments 'there were some 80 engines present and it probably had the best set of working exhibits we have seen, many of which (like the horses) were non-steam and aren't shown here. And the grand parade into the small main arena was simply mind boggling'.
Choose the page you are interested in and within that, click on a thumbnail for a larger image. Then click again to return to the page. A number of engines appeared in the programme as noted on the appropriate pages, but I did not record them. If they were there I would appreciate a photo to use, which will of course be acknowledged.
