South Wales Railways in the 21st Century

On May 8^th 43 members and guests were present for Stuart Warr’s “South Wales Railways in the 21^st century”. As is usual these days the May meeting is an event in the annual Radyr and Morganstown festival. Stuart is a prolific as well as a very accomplished photographer and was able to show us only a small selection of his work. Nevertheless, as he told us, we saw 35 different types of locomotives and dmus, most being everyday sights at the time but also rare visitors such as the “Hastings” demu and GWR steam railmotor W93. We also saw 42 different liveries.  Starting with freight we then saw dmu and loco hauled passenger and departmental trains before ending with a representative sample of steam hauled specials.  There was a good mix of portrait images and trains in the landscape, notably views of Ferryside from Llansteffan on the other side of the Towy estuary and various locations in the South Wales valleys. There was also a good mix of urban and rural locations from the English border to Fishguard Harbour and stations along the Heart of Wales line as far as the Sugar Loaf. Our thanks to Stuart for a well researched and entertaining presentation.