Thomas and his Friends Day & Bressingham Steam Museum

As promised, here's a bit more info on Sunday's trip to see Thomas & Friends. Before I start, I'll apologise for the photo quality - they were taken on my mobile phone.

We went to Bressingham Steam Museum near Diss, Norfolk. Every so often this, and other Steam Museums and Train Stations, will put on a special Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends day, which basically means putting faces on their steam vehicles, playing the theme music, getting someone in to paint faces, making sure the shop is fully stocked with Thomas toys and adding a few quid to the entry fee (cynic, moi?!)

Anyway, the little 'un always enjoys it even after umpteen times, but on this occasion the weather really tried to put a dampener on things. We were quite lucky that it held off until lunchtime and we went to get a bite to eat. As we sat down to eat the heavens opened. It was a deluge. We sat in a covered area outside -this area had a clever roof feature where the rain ran down into a circular pool in the middle of the seating area. With lighter rain this is quite a god feature, but this stuff was monsoon-like! So, the rain was splashing out and anyone sat within a meter of it was gonna get a bit wet. But worse was to come, because the pool was rapidly filling up with water -we didn't hang around long enough to see it flood.

So, after lunch we spent a few minutes checking out the inside displays, which included watching scale model trains going round and round and round and round -if you're 3 years old this is fascinating! The inside displays included some vehicles and sets from Dads Army and Only Fools and Horse. Here's a couple of piccys from the latter.




After we'd spent an hour or so inside we braved the elements and went in search of trains again. At Bressingham there are 4 different short train rides to go on, which is better than most places. There are also carousels and dodgems. All steam powered.

After about 4 hours we're all flagging, and although the rain was finally ceasing and we still had one train ride to do we decided to call it a day. This is where the fun really begins because we went to the shop -it's a real pain trying to remember what Thomas trains my son has!!! Luckily his memory is better than mine so, as a reward for good behaviour, he picked out a couple of trains and was still clutching them as he fell asleep in the car less than 5 minutes later.

I remembered to take a piccy of Thomas and one of his friends. Can you guess which one is which?!