Back in May, my father and I went to a steam railway gala at the West Somerset Railway, a heritage steam railway in - you guessed it - West Somerset! It's actually the longest heritage line in Britain, at over 20 miles long running from Bishop's Lydeard (nr Taunton, the county town of Somerset) to the coastal town of Minehead.

The Mayflower famously carried the Pilgrims from England to Plymouth Rock in 1620. In this scene, 404 years later, steam engine 61306 'Mayflower' carries passengers along a 20-mile stretch of heritage railway in Somerset, despite having spent her working life on the other side of the country. Built in Glasgow in 1948, just as her initial company - the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was nationalised as part of British Railways, she was based in Yorkshire and would have worked on routes from the North of Scotland down to London. She was bought for preservation in 1967, and since then has been sold and resold among private collectors to operate mainline steam services.

You read that right - there are companies in the UK which operate chartered steam trains for use on mainline services. I've been on a couple of these, and there's nothing quite like powering down a railway line at 75mph in an 80-year old carriage, while holding up electric expresses that are designed to run at 175mph. :D

Hope you enjoy!