Old Warden Steam Rally 2024
Saturday Night Fever
This is one of a series of pages which I have uploaded to illustrate facets of steam rallies we have attended in the UK. Such events occur all over the country in the summer months, they are easily found by using your favourite search engine and may have anything between a handful of steam engines and hundreds (as at the Great Dorset Steam Fair which could probably be fairly described as having an excess of riches). Click here for the Old Warden index and click here for the overall 2024 index.
The lights on showman's engines have had a spellbinding effect on customers since the early days of the steam fairground when domestic electricity was much less than universal. Until digital photography came along, it would have needed a camera on a tripod using the 'B' setting to have a stab at recording it. I know a bit about this kind of thing as I used to take pictures of the Roman candles from bagasse burning steam locomotives in Java's sugar mills - my initial efforts were an expensive waste of slide film as I had no way of knowing what my results would look like.
Nowadays, all you need to do is use your smartphone, as Paul Gilbey did with each of the showman's engines at Old Warden. I confess that I have given them a minor tweak which took all of 15 seconds and these are the results - just click the thumbnail as usual. Maybe next time he'll wait for some of the punters to arrange themselves a bit better!
