Its Bygones Weekend in Wales so its a week and a bit of driving trains for me. There is a cunning plan. No, actually, its a complicated and interlinked plan for the three days of the event with trains all over the place. Service trains mixing with Vintage Passenger trains, freights and Gravity Train.

The plan. Lets see how reality matches it

The plan for me as I type this 2 hours before it all starts is…..

Pretty much as I finish typing this I book on the drive Merddin Emrys on what could be considered the first train of the festivities as its an extra to Blaenau to connect with the Conwy Valley service delivering visitor for the weekend. Merddin comes out of traffic on Sunday for a major overhaul so this will probably be my last drive of it for now.

Friday I take over DLG from its first crew and then work an anti-gravity train to get the slates up the hill and then we do a trip to TyB (for cake). I get a day off on Saturday and then on Sunday it’ll be fun as I am driving Blanche on a Linda & Blanche double header to Blaenau and back.  The following week is four days of driving service trains as the season winds down.

This is probably my last fling if driving for this season as the medics have something unpleasant planned for me when I get home. Missing half the season has been a pain (in the leg) but I have been trying to catch up since the 70th anniversary weekend. In a normal season I drive over a 1000 miles, my efforts to catch up have got me to 730 so far.

The catch up has meant that not much has happened in the EDM Models workshop but I make no apology for that really. At 65 and with a wonky leg there will come a time when I can no longer drive trains so I am going to do whilst I can.

Once this week is done its back to the model workshop to get on with projects there.