Santa Specials – Father Christmas and mince pies on steam trains – have been a staple of the season at least since I was a child, and for decades before that, probably. But that’s not really feasible in 2020 and so the heritage steam railways of the country have had to come up with some other draw for the festive season and what they seem to have come up with is lit-up trains. I didn’t know my own local railway was doing that until too late so I decided to book a ticket to the Watercress Line’s Steam Illuminations.
The Watercress Line, originally and officially the Mid-Hants Railway, came into being basically to create an alternative route between London and Southampton but then Dr Beeching came along, as he has a habit of doing, and in 1967, the line was closed. So of course, a group of steam enthusiast volunteers promptly set to work re-opening it and getting restored heritage steam & diesel locomotives running on it. The result is a set of pretty and old-fashioned stations which meets a branch line of the South West Main Line at Alton. It’s particularly pretty at the moment because all the stations are strung with colourful lights and trees.
Because of COVID, you have to book either a table for two, a table for four or a private compartment for the Steam Illuminations. You can’t buy individual tickets as “we need to fill our carriages up efficiently”. I mean, as long as you pay, there’s no reason why you can’t turn up alone and occupy your table for two solo – or even revel in having your own compartment all to yourself – but my dad likes steam locomotives so I took him with me.
(Incidentally, if my persistent use of “locomotive” over “train” in this blog seems awkward or annoying, I’m the daughter of a trainspotter who can no more call the hot bit at the front a train than I could call it a teaspoon.)
We arrived nearly an hour early at Alresford, just in time to see the train before ours come in. This is the Alton one, which starts from and terminates at the other end of the line. It was stopping here mostly to put the loco onto what was now the front of the train but also so that the passengers could take plenty of pictures for social media – I’ve never seen social media pushed quite so hard at an event like this. The Steam Illuminations are new and unique and they want the world to see them.
(I know I said my local railways is also doing a lights event but I’ve looked at the video and theirs is pretty different. So we’ll let the Watercress Line keep its “new and unique”.)
At first glance, it looks like the six coaches (and baggage/power van) have been liberally decked in those dangling falling-snow effect lights from B&Q, and then you realise they’re all perfectly synced, sending bands of colour running smoothly from one end of the train to another – alternate blue and white bands, then blue-purple-pink-coral-red, then more and more. And not only do the colours run along it, they run round it, rolling from roof to wheels and back. It’s incredible.
The loco doesn’t have the same lights. It has something more like tube lights, outlining the smoke box door and the boiler. On this first train, the loco’s lights were blue but when ours came chuffing in half an hour later, the colours matched whatever the lights were doing on the coaches, if not quite the pattern. Along the bottom of the coaches were banks of floodlights so they can light up the trees and the tunnels and even the wreaths of steam to match as well. We said a few times that some of the people living alongside the line must just love this riot of lights and colour chuffing past their window every half an hour.
I’d decided to go on the grounds that they seemed to be taking plague precautions. Masks on the train, screens between tables, compulsory seating plan etc. However, they didn’t seem to have considered the platform part of the event at all. It was packed, especially around the loco, the cafe and the toilets and a lot of people were taking “they haven’t ordered us to wear masks on the platform” to mean “I’m not going to wear a mask on this crowded platform”. Obviously I’m in favour of masks and since I’ve made my own, I’m particularly delighted to show them off in public, even if I was flustered into putting on my Christmas one Santa side out rather than snowflake side out. They definitely need a lot of improvement on the platform crowd control.
So, in came our loco. It’s an S15, if anyone cares, a loco made for freight, 100 years old last October, 65 feet, 135 tons, proper big thing. I’m no trainspotter and I have to go and look up details but a steam locomotive is a thing of beauty, especially if it’s a really big solid one. We boarded – Coach F, table 5. There were more lights inside. We could see the outside ones hanging over the windows and there was a string running along the ceiling, which turned out to be synced with the outside ones. Finally, we each had a wristband which was lit up on the platform but came alive when the train started moving, being remote-controlled by the lighting system to also change colour in sync with everything else. The glass screens between the tables reflected the strings on the ceiling and seemed to double them and to finish it all off, we were played Christmas music all the way to Alton and back. If anyone knows who did the rock covers of Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Twelve Days of Christmas, we’re both desperate to know. It sounds like someone from the Green Day/PATD/Good Charlotte era but we haven’t tracked either of them down yet.
We got stuck at Medstead. The Alton train hadn’t departed and of course, we couldn’t gallop down the single track until the other train sitting in it was out of the way, with the result that we were running late and the Carol of the Bells, my all-time favourite Christmas song got cut off when we finally arrived.
We had our time for photos while the loco changed ends and then we were off again. Going to Alton features quite a long steep bank, hard uphill work even for a strong freight engine like ours but returning to Alresford was quicker and easier, with no water stops along the way and the other train was sitting quietly at Medstead waiting for us to pass. I couldn’t figure out how it had covered two-thirds of the line twice in less than the time it took us to cover one third of the line twice. I assumed that perhaps it had finished for the night, had departed Alton empty and had just moved further up to give us space, rather than gone all the way to Alresford and back but it does appear the last Alton departure is 8.30pm so somehow it had covered that distance.
Anyway, the railway can deal with timetable logistics. We chuffed straight back to Alresford with the music and lights going and then everyone piled off the train and back out into the freezing December night. As of time of writing, there’s still some availability for the Steam Illuminations on the Alton 20:30 on the 29th and on the Alresford 20:05 and Alton 20:30 on the 1st, 2nd & 3rd of January if you like the idea of an absolute riot of colour and noise, backed up by a heritage steam locomotive, or maybe take a look at your own local railway and see if they’ve got an event on. They’re all run by volunteers and they’ll have had as hard a 2020 as anyone and they’ve probably got some great lights waiting for you. This is actually my second of three pretty lights events this year, because if I can’t do anything else, I’m going to look at pretty lights (the other two are walking trails).
