Keeping the carriages spick and span at Didcot Railway Centre, by Ann Middleton

EVERY so often, a small group of volunteers spends a day at Didcot cleaning our carriages. Cleaning the outside isn’t as simple as you might think, because the sides are so high off the ground that you can only reach them when they are next to a platform. Roger, the railway centre manager, shunts them into one of our stations for the cleaning operation. Sometimes the side you would like to clean is the one furthest away from the platform, so it doesn’t get done on that occasion. Cleaning the outside is mainly a question of applying elbow grease, rags and cleaning sprays, and more elbow grease, paying special attention to the windows. We only clean the painted sides; we like to think that the soot and dirt on the roofs and ends as a patina, like on antiques.

Cleaning the inside is more varied. The floors we usually vacuum using Henry the Hoover. The Steam Rail Motor and trailer are particularly challenging as their slatted floors are impossible to clean any other way. We treat the inside of windows in the same way as the outside, but whereas the outside tends to be sooty and dirty, the inside has often been licked by enthusiastic children. I can’t imagine that the glass tastes very nice, but that doesn’t stop them doing it. Children also like leaving sticky fingermarks all over the windows. We usually try and lift out the seat cushions, and find some interesting things that have slipped down between them. Last time I made a small profit with the money that had fallen out of people’s pockets. When it’s been raining, the floors may need mopping to get them really clean. Mirrors and pictures get a shine too, but generally the inside paintwork of the carriage is OK.

When we’ve finished, the carriages look shiny and bright, and so do our faces. We have some fun with the destination boards – sometimes we go "Round the Bend" or "Far Far Away", which make our visitors smile. Others have genuine names like Paddington or Abingdon and some of our more mature visitors express a wistful hope that we will get to that destination. Unfortunately the longest run at Didcot is about here quarters of a mile, so that’s the farthest we can take you.