Evesham Vale Light Railway

Garden centres are horrible. Once upon a time they were places where people bought plants. Now they have expanded into mini department stores selling some stuff you want and other stuff that shouldn't really be in the same building as plant life. Evesham garden centre is a case in point. I get the idea of bird feeding equipment and even books, although only those on gardening the others are superfluous. A lot of the clothes aren't suitable for weeding and as for home wares ? Garden Centres I say know your job and stick to it please.

Anyway, on the same "shopping village" there are many other attractions including somewhere that sells Guinness polo shirts and a shop for horrible looking shoes. On the edge though is a gem. A delight that makes up for all the other horrors. Evesham Vale Light Railway.

The line is a 15 inch gauge railway that runs in and out and back configuration. There are excellent views, an intermediate station for picnicers and best of all, real live steam engines. Two of them when I visited. Proper engines too, not replicas of mainline ones. The coaches look realistically miniature railway too. I'm no expert but I think they look similar to Arthur Haywood designs. They all have a roof which shows sensible thinking on behalf of the designers.

The run doesn't take that long but for a couple of quid you can't complain. You do get to see the locomotives spun round on a turntable and who doesn't want to see that ?

More photos on Flickr.

EVLR official website.