Steel, Steam & Stars is a nine day long gala event on the Llangollen Railway, between Saturday 21st and Sunday 29th April, organised to raised funds for the 6880 Betton Grange Society, as a major means of raising funds for the building of this brand new locomotive. The event assembles a large line up of locomotives, including guest locomotives, such as Tornado and the majority of the Llangollen Railway’s own fleet. In addition there will be a variety of other attractions including a timetabled freight train with accommodation for passengers in three brake vans, a steam & vintage rally, a beer festival, a display or miniature steam and model engineering, and for 2012, trips along the newly extended railway towards Corwen.

The steam & vintage rally will be held in the field adjacent to the station at Glyndyfrdwy and will feature traction engines and vintage vehicles, along with a large marquee hosting a model railway exhibition.

The model railway Exhibition is sponsored by Hornby Magazine and will feature a number of top quality layouts, including the magazines own St Stephens Road layout.
The model railways layouts will be operating over the two weekends of the event and I will be assisting Hornby Magazine editor Mike Wild operating his St Stephens Road layout this coming weekend.
St Stephens Road is based on a fictitious location in North Cornwall nominally just north of Launceston where a Southern branch meets the Western Region with the station having a dedicated platform face for the Southern line. A junction and combined goods yard allows for workings between the two regions such as freight including china clay trains.

It certainly looks like it should be an impressive event with plenty of variety and action, so come along and say hello and help raise some money to go towards getting 6880 Betton Grange into steam (and yes I realise this is supporting an locomotive of the ‘other’ railway but it is still a good cause!)