Bressingham Steam Museum and Gardens

Little W loves trains. "Dad, can we get your train set out and play with it, please? Please!". But my Hornby 00 3-rail set (second-hand when I was given it 44 years ago) only comes out when we are stuck indoors for a few days. Instead we made a picnic and took a day-trip to Bressingham.

It's about 20 miles from Bury St Edmunds - up the A143 to Stanton, left onto the B1111 to Garboldisham then right along the A1066 towards Diss.

There is lots to do and, in high season, they have all three narrow gauge railway lines running. We started on the Garden Line, pulled by "Alan Bloom". Some soft toys have escaped and can be found around the track. We counted 21 animals in total.

We had our picnic in the Dell Garden.

You can see the Garden Line train going along the side. The flowers in the garden were very colorful, especially the Crocosmias.

You are allowed three rides on The Gallopers, a fantastic Victorian steam roundabout with jolly steam organ. Here's Little W with me on Clare (that's a coincidence having been in the place of that name the day before).

Big Miss was behind the camera.

The exhibition centre, which has a "Dads' Army" exhibition in addition to various model railways and railway memorabilia, has now acquired an "Only Fools and Horses" set and Peckham omnibus. Then there's the locomotive shed with the standard gauge engines and royal carriages (very plush).

We had fun in the Raydon Wood Signal Box changing all the signals.

The equipment comes from the Oakington Signal Box in Cambridgeshire.

We also visited the Foggy Bottom Garden, which is excellent for hide and seek. We lost Little Miss for 10 minutes.

But, at the end of the day, what we were really there for were the trains. Toby the Tram Engine took us around the Nursery Line.

But this engine, called Mannertreu, built by Krupp of Essen in 1937 for use in an exhibition park at Dusseldorf, was little W's favourite as it went the fastest.

We finished by visiting the garden centre and got a rather pretty Celosia Caracasto take home to Michelangelo Mummy. You can find more pictures from the day in my Flickr set.