GREAT WELLAND RAILWAY & RALLY SITE
The Ross-on-Wye Steam Engine Society, Woodside Farm, Welland, Worcestershire.
Grid References: SO 803410 for the site entrance and SO 804407 for the other end of the Great Welland Railway.
The Welland Steam Rally is a show primarily aimed at Road Traction enthusiasts which has been held on a site at Welland near Malvern for many years. In 2012 a section of standard gauge railway track was paid and has been designed as the Great Welland Railway. The 2013 rally was held over the three days 26th to 28th July 2013. Robert Pritchard comments that the admission cost was £8.00 and worth every penny.
Railway items on site were:
TEUCER, an 0-4-0 diesel mechanical locomotive,DM named TEUCER. The works plate gave the details as Drewry Cars No.2567/Vulcan Foundry No.D294 of 1955. It is owned by Allelys Heavy Haulage Ltd of Studley, Warwickshire.
There are two sections of permanent standard gauge track on the Welland site. The longer is the Great Welland Railway which the descriptive notice states was laid in August 2012 and used 31 lengths of track, 30 metres. The lower end is close to the wood near the rally entrance in the Hook road but it has no buffer-stop although the top does. Brake van No.W56769 was being used for passenger rides with Kerr Stuart No.3063, an 0-4-0WT of 1918, owned by Bill Parker of “The Flour Mill” at Bream in the Forest of Dean. This locomotive also worked at the railway during the August 2012 rally.
The other length of permanent standard gauge track is a much lighter affair and is slightly further into the site. An unidentified four-wheel steam crane was shuttling backwards and forwards along it.
Also on site was a temporary narrow gauge railway as part of a road-making demonstration. Rock was transferred from the mobile crusher to the working area in two side-tipping skips hauled by a small diesel locomotive which advance publicity revealed to be 2’0” gauge 4wDM Motor Rail No.21282 of 1957 from the Lea Bailey Light Railway, also in the Forest of Dean. A wide variety of steam and non-steam equipment was being used in this demonstration including a Warsop “Benjo” (after its inventor Ben Johnson) hand-held petrol-powered whacker and NP 7791 (Aveling & Porter 11448 of 3/1926) a steam roller which spent its entire working life with North Bromsgrove Urban District Council and the 1933 successor body Bromsgrove Urban District Council which sold it to a private buyer in 1967.
The standard gauge steam crane is visible in one of the pictures of the Motor Rail. Robert Pritchard deliberately included the ancient theodolite in the other one, having used something like that himself, but notice the finger sign pointing to Dunrolling, Road to Ruin and (I think) Over the Hill!
All photographs and article by Robert Pritchard, 28th July 2013.