IT STARTED life as a disused engine shed – but 50 years later Didcot Railway Centre is still delighting visitors and bringing history to life.

To mark the major milestone this weekend volunteers held a three-day gala – ending today – bringing out some of the attraction’s most prized engines for display.

There was also a miniature railway, visiting locomotives from Severn Valley Railway and the East Anglian Railway Museum, as well as a real ale bar and Morris dancing.

A flypast of Spitfire and Hurricane planes was planned yesterday but had to be cancelled due to the weather.

But that didn’t deter scores of families and rail enthusiasts from coming along for the special occasion.

Simon and Sarah Barton, from Didcot, brought their children Joshua and Jasmine.

The family are members of the centre, Mr Barton said as he clutched the lead of their one-year-old labrador Tango.

“We absolutely love it here.

“It’s on our doorstep and the kids think it is fantastic.”

For Joshua, eight, there was no question of which steam engine was his favourite. “King Edward II”, he beamed. “He is the fastest.”

His sister, four, added: “I love King Edward as well.”

Mrs Barton said: “We come here all the time but have never seen this many of the engines out of the shed.”

Leaning out of the cab of one of the centre’s tank engines, volunteer drivers Nick Crook and Alex Beasley said the celebrations had been ‘really, really good’.

Mr Crook added: “Coming to do this is a very enjoyable job – and it also keeps us out of the pub.”

The centre’s origins can be traced back to the Beeching cuts, when British Railways closed the depot based there in 1965.

Volunteers from the Great Western Society moved in from 1967, after negotiating a long lease, along with just three locomotives and a handful of carriages saved from the scrapheap.

It has since been transformed into a popular visitor centre, dedicated to showing people what travelling by rail was like in the heyday of Brunel’s Great Western Railway.

Alan Rhodes, a steward who staffs the centre’s museum, said: “It’s a very special place.

“We get a lot of interest from all ages and there is a lot of admiration for the quality of the relics we’ve got. People are often surprised by the scale of the railway back then – it was the whole package. In that respect, the centre is a window into the past.”