Welland Steam Rally (25th - 27th July 2025)

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 2025 introduction and overall index.

For me, Welland 2024 was the year's outstanding rally with again over 100 engines present and I had awaited the 2025 version with eager anticipation. I was not disappointed, I recorded and photographed 100 engines on a cloudless Friday, totally exhausting myself in the process as I walked some 10km according to my hiking App.

In 2024, the organisers had embraced 'Park and Pay' with spectacularly good results. Maybe the word had got around but on Saturday, an unprecedented number of visitors pitched up which crashed even the new system. As somebody said to me "Where did they all come from?", not that it mattered. The crunch point now became the overflow car parks which had to be reached by a snaking single lane through the main car park. After a long and successful Friday and confident that we would again sail in, we had a relaxed start and were rewarded with a traditional midday near grid lock which we partly avoided by using a back lane. Even the first overflow was full! I could hardly complain (again!), they had made a necessary change and now they will need more; for a start I would suggest doubling up with adjacent farm gates between the fields.

And to top everything off, there were more toilets including a long line outside the pay gate, very necessary for those who had been stuck in the queue. All of which except the toilets didn't matter much to me, I was back for a relaxing 'fill in' day and the sun only appeared as I approached my first engines. Needless to say, there was a marvellous atmosphere throughout. I scored 112 road engines, marginally more than 2024 but since the last few as always were difficult to dig out, I doubt many people noticed and it's not impossible that I missed one or two. I even had the luxury of starting to compile my report on Sunday while the visitors were no doubt queuing again with a near leaden sky overhead, discovering in the process that there were a typical 4 'new' engines for me.

I have not done separate pages for 'Working Steam' and 'The Hill', the former would have been too similar to the 2024 version and the hill was too dusty right from the start... (It wasn't the steam engines!)

Next weekend is South Cerney, another local rally for us and one which is somewhat more digestible. Ideally I would also be going to 'Weald of Kent' for the Lambert Reunion but sadly it's too far and too expensive for this old man.

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.

Showman's Engines	General Engines Part 1	General Engines Part 2

General Engines Part 3	Rollers	All the Rest

A regular steam ploughing engine had an issue and the guest Case stepped in...

It's not just traction engines..