Our penultimate stop off at the WSR gala was at Williton. This is one of the main passing places on the line so is a good place to watch the trains go by.

Also at Williton are some of the railway’s workshops. Here they restore some of the WSR’s stock as well as undertaking contract work from elsewhere. This CCT was rather nicely restored and caught my eye sitting outside:

Some sort of small saddle tank was under restoration too, its boiler was standing just behind:

An original planned guest was supposed to be 6695 from the Swanage railway but as you might have heard its low loader managed to snap in half on the way causing damage to the loco. It was sitting rather forlornly on the jacks when I saw it, as far as I know it’s still there:

Its replacement was 5643 which I managed to catch a  glimpse of on the way:

I managed to miss this loco for most of the day, but I wasn’t too worried about this as I’ve seen this class of loco a number of times. However I was a little upset that they put the Ivatt mogul, a first time visitor to the line, only on shunting duties at Dunster. As such, this was the best view I got of it all day: 😦

Back in Williton shed, there were a number of model railway stands. I love looking through old boxes of tat in the hope of a bargain, and there was absolutely loads of tat to look through! In the end I was restrained and came home with a Lima Prairie and an Airfix coach that is now living on my diorama I made a while ago:

Outside, you could see one of the lines of vehicles ‘yet to be done’

There was a diesel shed as well but I didn’t want to catch anything, so steered well clear of that.

Then it was back up to the footbridge to watch the next two trains come in:

Our train back to Bishop’s Lydeard, and it’s 4270, a loco I see regularly on the GWSR, typical!

And Raveningham hall again, this time sporting the South Wales Pullman headboard. That’ll do for today, Our final stop was back to Bishop’s Lydeard where we found a pleasant surprise…

Click here and follow links to read more about the gala.