Steam Elephant!

We took our American friends, along with their young lads, to Beamish open-air Museum. We all had a great day, one of the highlights of which was a ride on their steam Waggonway. Here you see the lads watching the driver stoking the boiler.

The engine, called the Steam Elephant, is a replica, made in 2002, of a locomotive built in 1815 in Wallsend. This was originally thought to have been made by George Stephenson, but now it is thought that John Buddle and William Chapman built it.