East Lancashire Light Railway
Since we’re on holiday I’ve decided that we should do something every day this week. Preferably something we wouldn’t ordinarily do, or better still something we haven’t done even though we keep saying we will. Yesterday it was visiting the IMAX theatre. Today was the turn of the East Lancashire Light Railway - a trip on the steam train from Ramsbottom.
I looked up their website which turns out to have a completely incomprehensible tariff page and inaccurate timetable. At least their phone number is correct so I spoke to one of their friendly (if stereotypically Lancastrian) volunteers who told me there was only one steam train today and I’d better get a move on it I wanted to catch it (or words to that effect). We rushed to the car.
We purchased our return tickets from Ramsbottom to Rawtenstall for £6.20 each making a total of £12.40 which then confused the ticket master no end as he then thought we wanted the 12:40 train rather than the 13:29 train which then caused me to wonder if we’d bought tickets for the 12:40 train and that we should have paid him £13.29. It took several minutes to sort this out and there was definitely a touch of The Two Ronnies about the conversation.
Anyway, since we had 20 minutes before the train was due we took ourselves off to the Ramsbottom Sweet Shop in search of creme brulee chocolates to eat on the train. We were in luck and also purchased some banoffee chocolates and other handmade delights. Mmmm.
It’s like being a kid again. What is it about steam trains that is so exciting? And so romantic? We were lucky with the weather too as the sun came out and you could see the steam approaching from quite a distance, and hear the toot-toot as the train drew near the station.
Once on the train we found ourselves a little table and settled down for the ride. It’s only about 10 minutes to Rawtenstall, but it seems a whole lot longer. You see the best and worst of the valley as you pass by scrap yards, fragments of old woodland, fields where the soil forms steps down the steep hillsides as it creeps down the slopes due to gravity and erosion, run down factories and people’s back yards with plastic model pigs. You swing from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again in just a few short miles. And all the while you feel yourself relaxing as you watch the swirls of steam roll and twist and finally dissipate over the fields.
Then you sit at Rawtenstall for 20 minutes as they transfer the locomotive from what is now the end of the train to the beginning. Plenty time for a nice beer from the buffet car. We also choose to swap tables so that we could sit on the other side of the train on the way back and experience the alternative view. Then with a chuff-chuff we were off again trundling back to Ramsbottom. Very pleasant all in all, and 40 minutes was plenty long enough.