As this 2ft gauge railway is located at Braxted Bakery (with a superb and very popular café), it really ought to appear in Baker! Public running only started on 4 Jun 2022, so 23 of our members had booked to attend.

The normal passenger run is a circuit of 335yd but our tour did rather more, of course, at this very friendly railway. All the track was covered except for a new shed road section under construction (the points for it had been laid only the previous week). It will stable the coach recently acquired from the late Adrian Shooter's Beeches Light Railway and the Hen 0-4-0T steam loco Works No16045/1918, under restoration on site, when it is back in traffic. An initial full circuit was made using the 4w-DH Alan Keef works No18/1985 loco 09735 which looks very smart in British Rail corporate blue livery. It is not a British Rail Class '09' lookalike but owes its numbering to quick thinking when it was being painted and the owner could only think of his phone number when asked what number to use!

Our train then reversed past Little Braxted station platform, which is on a branch off the circuit, to the goods shed and the loco shed going into both ends of line twice, to allow for a change of seats to reach the extremities. Next motive power was changed to Ruston Hornsby (RH) green livery Spoorijzer Delft

(4w-DM works No296111/1950) for a full circuit. To do the other siding off the circuit, a bit of gravity shunting was needed, and the 'Royal Daylight Paraffin' branded 4-w tank wagon was moved out of the way by 'people power' to allow the end of line to be reached. The RH loco, along with one coach, was then detached from the main train and run up and down the line until everyone had done this track.

For those interested, rolling stock used on the day included all the coaches; they have three 4-w two compartment open coaches, one 4-w crossbench open coach and a Third Class end balcony bogie saloon, Scindia State Railway, ex-Beeches Light Railway (2011) plus a 4-wheel 4 ton brakevan. The Little Braxted Light Railway owner operator, Gary Howard and his helpers, could only be praised for all their efforts and it was good to see all our participants going to thank him personally for this. Hot drinks and biscuits were kindly included before the riding started, very welcome with participants travelling from far and wide as usual for our trips. (Some early arrivers, perhaps not reading the e-ticket advising of these complimentary refreshments, made their own purchases from the café.) It was a very good visit and we are very welcome to go back to in the future to do more track. (Thanks to member Gary Lonsdale for arranging this fixture and providing information for this report.)