Thanks to those kind people at Olympus and London Camera Exchange, I spent a very enjoyable day last week at the Llangollen Railway. Even though I don’t presently have an Olympus camera, that was no barrier, and it was good to spend a day with like-minded ‘togs exploring the photo opportunities around this lovely heritage railway.

Not only did we get to travel the length of the line through the beautiful Dee Valley in a superb steam hauled train, but also had access to one of the still-working signal boxes and a tour of the railway workshops. Remarkable what this largely volunteer supported railway charity has achieved – not only bringing back to life a section of railway that closed to passengers in 1965, but recreating many of the original buildings and structures that had been demolished. The line now runs for around 10 miles from the beautiful station at Llangollen, via Berwyn and Carrog to Corwen. Not only have the railway workshops rebuilt and maintained locomotives and rolling stock for the railway, but they are building new locomotives for their own use and on behalf of other heritage railways around the UK.

In addition to a year-round regular timetable, they run special events such as Santa Specials, and even host weddings – a wedding party were using the train for a reception when we visited.

Rather than be weighed down by my full photo kit, I traveled fairly light with just my Sony A7iii camera body, and 35mm and 55mm lenses. The lack of zoom flexibility was more than repaid by the opportunity to take some wide-aperture shallow depth of field shots.  I’ve a few shots I’m very pleased with, and will definitely be returning! Here are a few more photos from the day – all suitably ‘retro’ processed to reflect the ambience of this delightful venue…

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