Eee its Tea time

Here I am at the York's medieval city walls and the signs directing those in need of refreshment to Evie's Tea Room, envelopes can be posted on the way past in the double post box.  Nearby is Exhibitions Square the home of the City Art Gallery which is currently closed for a major upgrade until 2015.  This is Bootham Bar

the north west entrance and  one of four gatehouses into York.  In medieval times it restricted traffic into the city, sometimes collecting tolls and in times of war was closed and defended.  Although York's historic centre is its famous attribute it is also a key railway junction halfway between London and Edinburgh on the east coast line so where better to house the national railway collection which includes this  

beast, the enormous steam locomotive KF7, its scale can be judged by the family reading the information board.  It is one of originally 24 designed specifically for the conditions on the Guangzhou-Hankou Railway line in China. Built by the Vulcan Forge of Newton-le-Willows in Lancashire, a company that even had its own railway station (Vulcan Halt).  Completed in the 1930s these engines remained mostly unscathed through the turbulent period of China's history in the 1930s and 40s until they were retired in the 1970s.  There are two known survivors of this class, one in the Beijing Railway Museum and this one in York which was offered back to the UK by the Chinese Government for preservation and arrived in 1981.

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at E here