It is at first sight a strange place for a beer festival, but on analysis is really not a bad venue. It is such a huge building that you can have a heavy rock band playing without annoying the neighbours. Furthermore any building that was designed to vent the smoke from the Flying Scotsman and 20 of its ilk is hardly going to have a problem keeping smokers and non-smokers from each others’ throats. And on a sunny afternoon there is nothing more British than a heritage train ride and a warm beer. Perhaps they will lay a cricket pitch for next year.

There was a canteen serving food and mugs of hot tea, and a bric-a-brac stall selling all manner of breweriana. There was also the experience of supping ale whilst gazing in awe at the sheer size of the Leviathans of the line that still fill this old engine shed. The Saturday night band “Idle Hands” were excellent and had folk rocking in the aisles before the night was out.

Punters attending the Festival on the Friday night and Saturday daytime will have enjoyed a great range of over 75 real ales plus ciders and the afternoon drinkers basked in glorious Spring sunshine. I visited the festival on Saturday night intending to help out behind the bar. Of course arriving towards the end of the final day of a very successful festival means that it was inevitable that the selection was bound to be limited and by then, non-empty barrels were rarer than serving staff. It was still possible to get a drink, although ordering by name from the programme was by then a waste of time. Fortunately the full range of Everards beers were available and offered better drinking at the end of the evening.

We paid £5.00 each on the gate to get in and then bought our beer tokens before it was pointed out that the beer was running short. It is always difficult to get the balance right so that you don’t end up with too much surplus beer which would be wasted, but a better system to restrict entry numbers to available supplies must be in place for next year’s event.  Regulars at the Rail Ale event will know to come dressed for the occasion. Whilst it might have been warm during the day, a draughty building soon gets cold on a spring evening.

The band may well have been warm playing with a megawatt of amplifiers on their dray, but it was a different story standing around on a cold concrete floor. By 10.30 most of the draught beer was gone and I took to supping Belgian bottles to use  up my tokens. There was quite an array and I was able to sample many that I had previously not come across. But please can someone explain why we are expected to drink 330ml bottles of bottle conditioned ale from a 275ml glass?

In spite of the difficulties experienced late on, I thoroughly enjoyed the festival and will be back next year. I’m sure that the organisers will make a great event even better!