Porthmadog Gwynedd Wales - Youngsters from a Porthmadog primary school sang on a railway platform at the start of a three day festival of steam.
 
Pupils from Ysgol Eifion Wyn were at Porthmadog's Harbour station when the first two trains of the Ffestiniog Railway's popular Victorian Festival set off.
 
Despite the pouring rain the children sang their hearts out and were applauded by passengers and staff, many of whom were in Victorian dress.
 
During the next three days staff and volunteers on the 13 mile railway, that runs between Blaenau Ffestiniog and Porthmadog, will operate an extensive timetable of trains using rolling stock that is not normally used in service.
 
Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland Railways general manager Paul Lewin said the railway has an extensive collection of heritage carriages and locomotives.
 
"The Ffestiniog Railway is a living museum. We have been running passenger trains since Victorian times, and many of those older vehicles have been lovingly preserved, so what better way to show them off than to have a weekend dedicated to that wonderful era? All have been dusted down and prepared for the weekend," he said.
 
Among the services being operated are several trains operated solely by gravity.
 
"When the railway was first opened in the 1830s slate would be loaded into waggons and would travel down the line from the quarries to Porthmadog by gravity. Horses would draw the empties back to Blaenau," added Mr. Lewin.
 
As the quarries expanded, and the line got busier, steam engines were introduced.
 
After the First World War the slate industry declined and the Ffestiniog Railway closed in 1946.
 
But preservationists reopened the line in stages from 1955 and finally reached Blaenau Ffestiniog in 1982.
 
The railway is now a major tourist attraction.
 
Eryl Crump.