As a Christmas treat, we travelled to the Great Central Railway in Loughborough for the Winter Wonderlights, a series of night-time train rides with the trains lit up with myriad lights.
Waiting on the platform
The first train of the evening is out with its happy passengers while we wait for our turn
You can see a hint of the bright colours of the train as it approaches the road bridge
…but then the lights are turned off before the train arrives in the station. Presumably done for a good reason, it was a bit of a shame, since as passengers on the train, this would was our only potential opportunity to see the train in motion with the lights. Indeed, with hindsight, we should have gone to Rothley much earlier and watched the lit-up train heading out on its first run, before we came to Loughborough.
Then, after a short while, the lights were powered up again, and we got to see something of the effect, albeit with the train stationary and with lots of fellow passengers constraining the view.
The programme was not just the illuminated train, but illuminated stations too, with a number of illuminated figures at the stations and nearby to add to the scene as seen from the train.
At Leicester, I got out for a look around
Although as passengers we couldn’t see the illuminated train in motion, we could see the spooky glow our lights cast on the landscape as we went past, particularly on the trees and in cuttings.
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Watching the glow of our train on the trackside
A fun expedition – here’s the train from above as we depart the station and head for our hotel in Leicester.