TODAY'S NUMBER IT IS the nearest thing to time travel. The coaches are painted in classic Great Western chocolate and cream livery and at their head a legendary King class locomotive.
A long whistle pierces the air. Moments later the six feet six inch diameter driving wheels begin to turn and 6024 King Edward I draws out from beneath Temple Meads majestic station roof.
The sound from her pistons echo back through the train.
The unmistakable aroma of locomotive steam drifts gently in through the open windows.
Hermes Jewelry Watch It could easily be a Sunday departure in the 1930s.
But this is July 2010 and this is the Torbay Express recreating a summer excursion to Devon.
On board are 350 people.
Some celebrating birthdays, some simply enjoying a day out. But all of them lured by a love of steam.
The time travel illusion continues as an upright man in steel framed glasses and an immaculate 1947 station master's uniform makes his way through the carriages . He is 63-year-old Michael Wyatt who runs the family carpet business, Leonard Wyatt and Sons in Brislington.
His uniform was once worn by the station master at Temple Meads.
His love affair with railways began when he was three and was given a clockwork train.
"I can't remember a time when railways were not part of my life," he said.
"And look at this," he says proudly, "the last word in Great Western engine power at the head of a train on a Great Western route" It is now just after 9.15. But for the team of volunteers who help maintain, clean and prepare King Edward I the day began more than four hours earlier on a siding at the Barton Hill depot in Days Road.
King Edward I, one of only three out of the original 32 King class locomotives left and the only one currently running on the mainline, is being prepared for her day's outing.
Imported Russian coal towers above her and a giant orange hose snakes its way along the trackside gushing water into her tender.
Nearby on a support coach Shirley Parry is making tea.
She admits she is besotted.
"I fell in love with her the first time I saw her," she said.
She had gone to video King Edward I. Not long after she became a volunteer helping to clean the mighty engine.
Today she is a regular member of the support crew who travel everywhere with the loco.
Her husband, Nicholas, even proposed to her on the footplate.
"All steam engines are she," says the 54-year-old consumer services officer from Yeovil.
"They are living beings when they are in steam, they have their own personalities, their own characters, their own ways of behaving."
This particular 'she' was 80 years old last Monday.
victorian Gold Bracelets Yet but for the vision and dedication of volunteers King Edward I could have been a victim of the cutter's torch and lost forever.
When British Rail withdrew her in 1962 she ended up at the infamous Barry scrapyard.
But in 1973 a group of enthusias
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