Stoom in Dordt (May 26th - 27th, 2018)
This is one of a series of pages I have uploaded to illustrate facets of the steam rallies we have attended in the UK (and now the Netherlands). Click here for the 2018 introduction and overall index.
'Stoom in Dordt' is undoubtedly the best general steam event in continental Europe, held biennially at the end of May. We are very grateful for the help given to us by Colin Miell of the LCGB who arranged transport and accommodation and came up with a mass of useful information. The event's website was 'glossy' but when it came down to actual information about the exhibits, it fell flat on its face, frankly at a level way below the worst steam fair programme I have ever seen in the UK. Fortunately, most of the engines carried sufficient for identification and the 'European Traction Engine Register' was good for almost all the items with the exception of two of the Bikker fire engines and one Ruthemeyer roller which is actually listed under Germany but was quickly identified by a Google image search. The steam ship information at least allowed me to conduct a little on line research.
For historical reasons, most of the road engines were 'Made in England' and a few had come over specially for the event. Naturally for me the main attractions were the 'foreign' engines including those from Germany, the Netherlands and the USA.
This was originally a steam ship extravaganza on to which other steam has been grafted. Set around the historic harbour of the beautiful old city of Dordrecht it has an extraordinary ambience which attracts maybe 250,000 visitors. As such photography can be challenging and the pictures of the exhibits do not do justice to the occasion around them. You can wait forever to get a clear view and then just as it happens, some idiot wanders into the picture... I can't begin to guess who it was who wrecked Yuehong's picture here.
Choose the page you are interested in and within that, click on a thumbnail for a larger image. Then click again to return to the page. The steam boats are undoubtedly incomplete and given that engines on land were scattered all over the town, there were probably others, certainly I didn't see some engines hinted at by the programme. I made no attempt to photograph the miniature steam or the non-steam exhibits.
David Collidge's Steam Scenes website (http://www.steamscenes.org.uk/) is a fount of information and was a great help in compiling these pages.