Steam Locomotive Galatea passing through Whitehaven Station

[retroHelen]

 

[retroHelen]

It was a very cold day when we went to watch this steam loco and passenger coaches come through our town's station. You can see me in my long dark coat and furry hat standing by the passenger shelter on the platform at about 1.00 onwards - just been on the ministry that morning.

 

The loco was built in the 1930s at Crewe UK. The passenger coaches are mostly dining coaches. The first class dining coaches/Pullmans are the more fancy cream & brown named after precious gems. The second class dining coaches are the crimson coloured ones named after girls. Nice little dining tables at the windows with cute table lamps.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LMS_Jubilee_Class_5699_Galatea

 

The tunnel that the loco emerges from is one of the oldest in the country, built around 1847-50 and runs below part of our town and was one of the longest built in the 19th century. Every so often, along it's length this tunnel has chimneys, sticking up into the street and park above, to let smoke and steam escape or the passengers would suffocate in steam and sooty smoke!  Lord Lowther/Earl of Lonsdale, whose family owned the town for 3 centuries, did not want to see the locomotive go through his Georgian gem - town, so insisted that it ran underneath most of it. 

 

The railway line/track runs from Lancaster city in the county of Lancaster, along the seacoast of the North West UK all the way to Carlisle - city in the county of Cumbria on the border with Scotland.

 

Edited December 11, 2019 by retroHelen

[Qapla]

That is a very nice looking and nicely painted train ...

 

Do you do Ministry at the train station?

[retroHelen]

No we are not allowed to do that. Neither are we allowed to do ministry at the car park for the station and the supermarket behind it either.

 

We have carts in the town and a stall at the local market and do door-to-door work in the surrounding streets. Our market stall has finished until next year now as it goes all Xmas silly with Santa Grotto (grotty!lol'!) and carol singing and decorations. There's only a few of us living in our town of 26, 000, so plenty to do.

 

Our territory covers 3 towns and 19 villages with a few of us in each place adding up to about 86 of us here.

 

The town where I work, Cockermouth, only has 3 elderly Witnesses for 10 000 population.