A cold and frosty evening

Tonight was the first of the Carol Trains that run for three evenings. One comes up from Bishops Lydeard and the other from Minehead. They meet and exchange engines at Williton. The passengers alight together with their particular brass/silver band and sing carols, the up passengers in the car park and the down passengers on the platform.

We arrived shortly after 7pm, anticipating the first arrival at around 7:30. At first we were told that it would be 7:40 but the volunteer staff soon found out that it would be 8:40. So we sat in the warm 'Waiting Room' with a coal fire and a cup of coffee.

It turned out that the up train arrived before half-eight and before twenty minutes of carols were over, the Minehead train arrived, having been delayed by 10 minutes due to an incident. The engines then switched tracks, ready to pull a different set of carriages back to where they started. It was quite cold by now and we were beginning to feel and so we left for home. It was nearly 10 o'clock before the trains departed; I heard the down train puffing its way up the 1:99 incline to Stogumper from my bedroom as I typed this.

Today's garden birds featured a good number of Brambling again, 8 to be exact, together with 25+ Chaffinch, about 20 Greenfinch (although not all at once) and 8 King Harrys (Goldfinch to you), plus the usual Blue, Great and Coal Tits, Robins, Dunnocks, Pied Wag, Jackdaws, Rooks, Wood Pigeons and Herring Gulls.