Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, England

Next is a lovely train card (which whenever I look at, I think it is somewhere in Germany, dont know why)

Damems on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway is the smallest standard gauge station in the UK.

Locomotive 43924, a '4F Class' from 1920, was the first in the UK to be restored to working order, after rescue from a scrapyard.

Well done! Who would put this into a scrapyard? Tsk tsk tsk!! 

Number of lovely stamps of course, and i just figured out that by trying to remove the address I had also ruined that last stamp but Im not gonna be waiting to go home and rescan it, cos then this update will surely not happen...

Ill start with the non-queen stamp (not sure if Ill pinpoint the right Queen ones).

The top right stamp is from a set of 5 Christmas stamps issued in 1983. It is so lovely and I never would have guessed it is a Christmas one!

The stamp below it was issued one year earlier, and is from a set of four commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Death of Charles Darwin.

That ruined one is also from 1982, from a set of 5 stamps representing British Mariners. This one shows Lord Nelson (and it is 24p, face value).

As for the Queen - I gave up on here... I really cannot distinguish among all those shades of purple and blue and brown... I wish they would start putting the year on the stamps, would make things so easier.

Santon Station, Isle of Man

Well, one more card in this update since, a post about Chris wouldnt be a post about Chris without an Isle of Man card.

I can say that like 90% of my IoM cards are thanks to Chris. And magically he often manages to find ones with trains too :)


This one shows the Santon railway station which is a request stop near Newtown in the parish of Santon; it forms part of the sole remaining line of the Isle of Man Railway which once encompassed over 46 miles of network and retains its original station building.
The halt sometimes plays host to Santa's Grotto each December as part of the railway's Santa Trains service although between 2010 and 2013 it was not utilised for this purpose.

and look at these stamps!!
Gonna require some work to cover them all but that's the purpose of this blog, isn't it? :)

Starting from top left first is a ship from a set of 6 issued in 1980, commemorating the 150th Anniversary of "Isle of Man Steam Packet Company". Next to it is one from a set of 4 issued in 1974, commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Sir Winston Churchill. The third one in the row is from a set of four issued in 1981 for The Royal British lLegion Diamond Jubilee, 1921-1981.

The bottom row starts with a stamp issued in 1978 in a set of 5 representing buildings and this one shows the Tower of Refuge. Next to it is one from a set of two issued in 1975, under the title New Values and the last one is from 1978 from a set of four stamps commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Royal Air Force.

So, I believe that would be all for today. What a productive day, my oh my :D

A huge huge thank you to Chris for all these cards, and the bunch of others still not uploaded, and a huge thank you also to his wife Julie, who always participates in the sending of cards and signing them as well!

To all who celebrated Easter yesterday, Happy Easter! To all who will celebrate it next weekend, Happy Easter as well!

Till next time...

Sri Lanka

So after like 3 weeks into the New Year, I thought it was about time to blow off the dust and bring this place back to life after last year's hiatus.

Don't know if that was like my worst year blogging so far, but certainly not the one I would like to brag about. But what's done is done... and who knows, maybe this year will have a better outcome. No promises though, since they never work (there is nothing that works so badly as a New Year's resolution).

And the most proper way to start this year would be of course with cards received in 2019, which may not be much but are just enough for one blog post. :)

 The very first one is this lovely train card that Kiran sent me from his trip in Sri Lanka.
Dont know exactly which line this is, but it says that Taking the train is a great and inexpensive way to get around, the train journeys are real cultural experience and the most scenic routes will be highlights of your visit - in particular the wonderful journey from Colombo to Kandy and up into Tea County, and the coastal train ride from Colombo to Dutch colonial Galle.
British visitors will find the stations, signal boxes and old red semaphore signals very familiar.

Ok, I guess the rest of us will feel completely lost and puzzled then, wondering what kind of objects are those...

Kiran used two lovely stamps to match the card, issued in 2017 as part of the World Post Day.
The actual sheet is really fabulous btw...

Scenic Railway, St. Kitts

Well since the plans for the rest of the day have been cancelled, it wouldn't be a bad idea to use that time for an update here, right?? And who knows, maybe it would end up as a good thing, these cancelled plans, since it looks like a storm is approaching... once again - been having those like on daily basis now, as if someone has pushed a button and switched climates on this planet...

 As promised last time, this update will be dedicated to one of my fairies, and this time it is my dear Agi... and this post also coincides with this time of the year, cos it is the time of the InMusic Festival, but unfortunately this year I couldn't go... so no missiles fired to some mailboxes around the world either =/

And will open this post with a great train card from St. Kitts.
The Scenic Railway in St. Kitts. takes the passengers on a 3-hour tour that makes a 30-mile circle around the beautiful  island , with 18 miles by narrow gauge train and 12 miles on sightseeing buses. Built between 1912 and 1926 to transport sugar cane from the island’s sugar plantations to the sugar factory in the capital city of Basseterre, today the “Last Railway in the West Indies” provides visitors an unsurpassed opportunity to experience the scenery and culture of this unspoiled country.

there are two fruit stamps on the card, tangerines and a sugar apple - should be from a set of fruit stamps issued in 2007 but I am not 100% sure about it....

this card arrived without the address number btw but I guess I have become well known throughout the years :)))

Fonds de Gras, Luxembourg

I started with a train card, so lets end it with a train card... and the funny thing is that this train card arrived without the address number as well - Agi couldn't have done it better, even if she had tried :D

The  card shows the "Train 1900" which runs between Pétange and Fond-de-Gras, on the former "Mining Line". The train line was opened in 1874 in order to transport the iron ore extracted from neighbouring mines.
Historically, the Fond-de-Gras was one of the most important mining centres in Luxembourg. A few years after the closure of the last mine at the Fond-de-Gras in 1964, a few volunteers worked to preserve part of the railway line with the aim of operating a tourist train on the line. The first train ran in 1973.

at first I thought this stamp showed a bottle of perfume so I was even trying to sniff it... will just have to add this to my list of nonsense-I-have-done.
It is in fact from a set of 3 stamps issued in 2015 representing the National Museum of History and Art.

So, the storm didn't come after all, but at least I have used the time wisely :D

Aginice, hvala ti na sve ove divne razglednice i markice! Nadam se da se vidimo opet, prije ili kasnije! :*

And thank you all for stopping by. Make sure to check again soon, or not so soon, for another just regular no-fairy update :)

Trains, Alaska

A bit north now, where we have not one, not two, but three train cards from Alaska! I actually have quite some more train cards from here, but will leave those for another post.

First is the McKinley Express, which as like all Alaskan trains, takes you through stunning landscapes and sceneries. (Blogger keeps underlining my 'sceneries' with red. For a while I thought that I must have been dreaming that scenery has its plural, but it probably is blogger in the middle of some kind of nightmare.

as for the stamps, we have 3 copies of the Toleware stamp from 2007 and the se-tenat stamp from 2012, commemorating the 2012 the 100th Anniversary of the Cherry Blossom Festilval, Washington D.C.

The other two cards show trains in Skagway, and on this one the Thunderbird Diesel crosses the  Glacier Bridge.

More toleware stamps here, as well as one from 2012 commemorating the 200th Anniversary of Louisiana Statehood

Skagway is said to be one of the busies, exciting stops along the Inside Passage but it seems that these train lines mainly serve people who are on some kind of a cruise already and if a free seat remains, a regular mortal passenger may as well enjoy the ride.

and here we have an Inverted Jenny stamp (of course, not the very original one, but the one reissued by USPS in 2013 as a commemoration of the 1918 24¢ Jenny Invert airmail stamp error that shows the blue Curtiss “Jenny” airplane flying upside down within the red stamp frame.

Fort Steele Historic Town, Canada

To the stamp lovers, with a faint heart, after the previous post, you may want to close your eyes on this one too..if you are a Star Trek fan on top of it all, then just proceed at your own risk... don't say you haven't been warned :))

A fantastic card from one of Bryon's trips to Canada, showing a vintage train in Fort Steele, which is located in the South Kootenays, about 20 km NE of Cranbrook B.C. This train was built in 1923 in Canada and used in logging on Vancouver Island until 1960. To make this train functional again, the water boiler was rebuilt in 1975 by retiree H. Hawkins. The train is dedicated to all the craftsmen who designed, built and maintained "iron steam horse" locomotives.

and here we are at the scene of the crime. Do you see the felony here? Monstrous! Let the people decide what kind of punishment this kind of uglification deserves. I bet Canada post made an effort to issue this so that it can end up being crossed out with black pens.
Issued in 2016 to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek - this is one of the several sheets, portraying the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 & Klingon Battle Cruiser

Kinsey's Locomotives, USA

Next is a meeting card from over the pond! And I just realized that the majority of meeting cards I receive are from Europe, and rarely something coming from a different continent. I guess I just don't know the right people :D

But I surely know the right person for this one :P It is from the meeting in Seattle that took place last July the 30th and the guilty one why I have this card is of course Bryon :) And he made sure to enrich my train cards' collection as well :)
The card shows the Heisler locomotive (rebuilt and regauged by Heisler Locomotive Works) in Redmond, Washington in 1922.

Now I do not really recognize the majority of the usernames, but I do see that people had fun with leaving coffee marks on this one... I wonder why :D They were even kind enough to explicitly tell me about the origin of the stain, so you can see a cappuccino, an americano, a chai and something jam-filled - I guess it is some kind of a cake we are talking about :)

As for the stamps - the red pear definitive was issued in 2017, as well as the sharks ones, which come from a set of 5 (showing the Great White Shark and the Mako Shark), and also we have a stamp commemorating the bicentennial of the American Revolution, issued in 1971.

Well thank you Bryon very much   ❤

Melaka, Malaysia

Just one more card for today - I don't wanna overwor my rustiness :P

I have been rarely doing swaps for a long while now, partly because I somehow find this whole swap thing has become too demanding and more like a business than something done for pleasure, plus cos of financial reasons too. But sometimes you just spot a card and you know you have to go for it, which was the case with this one.
Sent by Bernard from Malaysia, who says he used to take this train from Ipoh to Singapore, where the journey lasted for almost 8 hours, but now with the new flight services, it takes like an hour. Yep, the planes have ruined it all :D
However, taking the price into consideration too, I'd always prefer a cozy train ride to a flight (trains in Macedonia are exempted from this).

The stamp is from a set of 4, World Post Day stamps issued in 2017. The postcrossing community there even organized a Postcrossing Meeting for the World Post Day.

Thanks a lot to Bernard for this card, and to you all for dropping by.

Till next time ;)

Train Postcrossing Meeting, Romania

This next card was a thrill to receive, a thrill!!

You know that like almost every day there is a Postcrossing meeting happening somewhere around the world, a big one or a mini one...and I have received a number of such surprises so far and they are always a delight, knowing that someone has thought of you...most of those go unnoticed, at least I don't really read any information about them happening...however, this Postcrossing meeting in Romania turned out to be a big deal...maybe you have heard about it, maybe you haven't (you can read all about it at the Postcrossing blog here...but it was like the first Postcrossing meeting...ON A TRAIN! And on top of that, they had printed a specially designed postcard for this...when I saw it somewhere on Facebook, my jaw dropped...
Well in general I don't really ask people to send me a card from a meeting since I believe these should be a surprise, so in this case as well, I kept my silence but deep down I was like bummed since I honestly didn't really believe someone would send me a card from this meeting....and then one day last week I was proven so wrong...I can't even explain to you my sheer shock and thrill when I found a card from the meeting in my mailbox...and all that thanks to Danut who remembered I love trains, and thought I'd like this card....you bet I would!! I was delighted!! It was like receiving a card from some brand new country...yes, that's how happy and thrilled I was...and still am!

here you can see the signatures....and frankly speaking I cannot decipher the majority of them...I don't know if the have just signed or used their PC usernames as well...but I am clueless.

The stamp was issued in 2015 and represent's Angel's tears....behind which there is actually a sad story...the stamp was issued after a tragedy that has happened at one of the nightclubs in Bucharest, where during a free concert, band's pyrotechnics, consisting of sparkler firework candles, ignited the club's flammable polyurethane acoustic foam, and a fire had spread rapidly. 36 people had died and 147 were injured...with this stamp, the Roman post wanted to show support to those who have suffered, supporting the medical recovery process of the victim's of the tragedy...just as Danut, I also wonder if money were really used for that purpose or not...

Thanks again a million to Danut for this most awesome surprise!

Lesson learnt - never lose hope....and avoid places where indoors they use outdoor pyrotechnics....

Alausí, Ecuador

So, back to normal posts....and thank you for surviving my last edition =)  And well, sooner or later you may have to go through another one, who knows :)

But for the time being, will focus on places I haven't been to but would LOVE to go to...and for which I have my dear buddies to send me postcards from...and of course make me feel all jealous about it :P

And for starters we have a card from Ecuador, which maybe wouldn't have seen the light of the day for a while more if like a week ago or so I didn't come across this post at the PC forum about the offer of cards from Ecuador...well I do have a few from there, so I was wondering if I should take part in it...but when I read they were to be sent from the US, I wasn't really interested...HOWEVER it just got me curious to check how many Ecuador cards I have posted....and I come here, check the Ecuador label, and to my utter bewilderment, I see only ONE...posted in July 2010...and that one is not even a written and stamped one....I thought it must be some mistake since I KNOW Agi has sent me cards from there from her trips...I check again and again, but no, no Ecuador cards posted...and then of course, I go through those piles of unpublished cards, and guess what? There they are!! Yep!!! A HUGE face-palm for me here! I can't believe it I could have been such an idiot and totally overlook those....and that makes me wonder that if I go carefully through those piles, what all sorts of 'surprises' I'm gonna find.....

So dear ladies and gentlemen, my first written and stamped card from Ecuador on the blog...sent in November 2010....yeah, you read it right...2010...neglected for like almost 6 years....I wonder if Agi has ever noticed I never posted these Ecuador cards....yeah, there is another one from few years later...as if the embarrassment wasn't enough already =/

Well dear Agi, I don't wanna make excuses with cliches like 'better late than never'...but I don't really have another one :)))))

The card shows a super-cool tourist train in Alausí, a town in the Chimborazo province of Ecuador.
Yes, it is a train - a small one, but so cool and funny :) I don't know if Agi in the end did take a ride on it, but she said that one is not allowed to sit on the roof any longer - heh, that is a bit of a bummer, if I was the one to take a ride, I would have loved to sit on the roof - it is just more adventurous....but I guess probably due to safety reasons, some measures had to be enforced....don't know if it is me though, but the people on the roof here seem to be freezing...yeah, on my second thought, not so convenient for rainy/windy days :)

two very nice stamps and a clear cancellation - the left one is from a set of four Tourism stamps issued in 2010, representing the diversity of Ecuador (this one shows Playa Los Frailes). The other stamp is another Tourism stamp, this time issued in 2009 in a set of eight stamps.

Agi, jedno najveće hvala opet, eto nakon toliko godina :)

Trains at the End of the World, Argentina

Ok, one more post for today...and honestly, I cannot believe it to myself that it has taken me THIS long to post these two cards..I just cannot believe it! I was so thrilled when I received them and remembered them the other day and then it dawned on me that I had never ever posted them...well, until now...FINALLY!


What so special about these besides being trains??
Well, these are the so-called trains from the end of the world...just the thought of it gives me shivers!

Ushuaia is that southernmost tip of South America, which has also been nicknamed "End of the World"
I received both of these cards from dear Viviam, who knowing how much I love trains, decided to surprise me...and send two...just in case one of them didn't arrive...but luckily, both of them did!

The trains here are part of the Southern Fuegian Railway or the Train of the End of the World/ El Tren del Fin del Mundo), which is a 500 mm gauge steam railway in the Argentinian province of Tierra del Fuego. It was originally built as a freight line to serve the prison of Ushuaia, specifically to transport timber. It now operates as a heritage railway into the Tierra del Fuego National Park and is considered the southernmost functioning railway in the world.

the first card bears a sticker, and not much I can say about it :)

on the second card you can see three different locomotives, named
1. Camila (I don't know who this one is named after - all I know is that it was built between December 1994 and February 1995 in Daventry, England ;
2. Ing. H.R. Zubieta (after the father of one of FCAF's directors);
3. Ing. L.D.Porta (named in the the honour of Livio Dante Ponta, an Argentinian steam-locomotive engineer)

(FCAF stands for Ferrocaril Austral Feugo)

a fun fact - there is also a song inspired by this :))))

not really my cup of tea...but well, it goes well with this post....I mean how I don't often come across songs that have been inspired by trains :)

two different stamps on this one...both coming from the same set of 9 stamps issued in 2014, under the title 'The Decade Won' slogan with which the ruling party refered to the period inaugurated by Kirchner’s presidency (2003-2007). The stamps commemorate different kinds of progress achieved during the management of the Argentinean presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner between the years 2003 and 2013.


Thanks a million dear Viviam for the most amazing cards! I love them!!

And wishing you all a nice week ahead and a lot of great postcards in the mailbox! :)

Kriegslok 33-248, Bosnia and Herzegovina

This card arrived as a surprise from Chris from his trip to Bosnia...

I am still in awe at how he managed to find a train postcard in Bosnia..I mean ok, knowing Chris and what he does and all, this shouldn't be a surprise to me..but you dont really get to easily find train postcards in Bosnia for example...or I might be wrong actually..now that I've mentioned it, I have received another train card from Bosnia before...ahh, ok nevermind..

"2015 - Real steam still operates to bring coal from Bosnia's open-cast coal mines to the machine junctions: German-built "Kregslok" No. 33-248 takes empty wagons from Lukavac back to Sikulje Coal Loader on 21 September 2014."

and a bunch of lovely stamps...all from 2015 (issued by the BH Post)

The triangular one commemorates the 3rd UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction - Sendai, Japan. The berry stamps also form a whole set and you have a blackberry, a raspberry and a currant...and frankly I am terrible in remembering the names and respective translations whenever it comes to berries...


Thank you Chris!!

Trains, Hungary

For my last post for today...and for this year actually, I reserved a bunch of train cards from Hungary...and when it comes to train cards, Hungary ranks pretty high on my list, along with Germany, The Netherlands and USA...

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The first one is an official, showing the 100th anniversary of the Börgönd (now part of the Székesfehérvár) Tapolca railway line. The picture side of the postcard shows the railway line skirting the northern shore of Lake Balaton together with miniaturised pictures of postcards of the station buildings of the period. In the stamp design of the postcard (featured below) a steam locomotive and Lake Balaton can be seen.
This is a commemorative postcard, issued by the Magyar post, so it i pretty special :)

as I already said before, that is a stamp design on the postcard (at the very right)...as for the other two stamps - the middle one is from a set of two Fruits stamps issued in 2012 (under the theme 'Cultivated flora of Hungary), and this one here shows us a Pándy sour cherry (among the varieties of sour cherry cultivated in the Carpathian Basin). The other stamp is from a set of 6 furniture stamps issued in 2000 (showing antique chairs).

Among all these cards I have a number that are blank...and of course, have no idea now how they have ended up in my mailbox....this is why I dislike blank cards...I know that when I once visited Budapest, I bought a few...but after all these years, and this hundreds and thousdands of train cards I have, I cant recall exactly which ones are those...anyways, the card above shows a Steam Engine No. 424 287 of MÁV (Hungarian State Railways) in Lajosmizse on Sept. 1st 1988.
Even though I'm a train fanatic, I am NOT an expert....so I cant really go into some further elaboration here besides what's written on the back :)

another blank one....it shows the Talent Electric railcar No. 5342 001-4 of MÁV, and diesel locomotive No. 4062 016-0 of MÁV at Hajdu Co. Ltd on May 20th 2007.

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Official card with a cool ID :) 

It shows the Children's Railway (Gyermekvasút or Line 7), a narrow gauge railway line in Budapest, which connects Széchényi-hegy and Hűvösvölgy and is 11.2 km long. The former name of the line was Úttörővasút (Pioneer Railway, in reference to the communist scouts).Except the train driver, all of the posts are operated by children aged 10–14, under adult supervision. and it is the world's largest Children's Railway.
Ok, now I definitely need to go back to Budapest...this is just way too cool!! 

The stamp on the left was issued in 2009 and it is from a set of two Christmas stamps...the other one was issued in 2006, featuring Illona Sasvarine who won the bronze medal in 1992 in Table Tennis at the Summer Paralymics in Barcelona, Spain. She had unfortunately passed away in 1999, at the age of just 45.

Again a card with the Steam engine no. 424 287, this time with a special train in the summer of 2002.

A card that arrived from a swap with Veronika, featuring the Budapest Cog-wheel Railway, officially called Tram line number 60 (BKV No. 61+51), on 24th of February 1997. 

the stamp was issued in 2012 in a set of two "Health Tourism" stamps, featuring spas. (This one shows the Rudas Baths - thermal baths in Budapest).

from a swap with Frank - problem is the text is covered with stamps so I cannot decipher much...except that the image dates from December 22nd 2003 - so just a bit over 12 years old...so sorry....

it is a 2010 stamp from a set of two from a Joint issue with Iran.

blankie......Joseph Haydn named Siemens Taurus electric locomotive no. 1047 504-4 of ROeEE AG at Győr station on August 18th 2009. P-6400 kW, Vmax = 230km/h 

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One more card from the Children's Railway, an official from Katalin (a DM fan! :D - she is my FB friend as well).
This one here shows the narrow-gauge steam engine no. 490 056 in 2007 in Szépjuhászné. 

and look at that stamp on the top!! an F1 one!!! It was issued in 2010, featuring the 25th Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix!! Thanks sooo much Katalin!!!

Steam Engine no. 22.034 (ex. 275 034) of Hungarian State Railways exhibited in the Hungarian Railway Museum on October 20th 2002.

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and juuuust one more...an official one....showing the Stadler electric railcar No. 5341 001-5 near Komarom on September 4th 2008.

Ok, is it just me, or the Hungarians are like fascinated with dates??!!! I havent noticed such a thing in train cards from other countries, stating exact dates! Or this dates-fascination is when it comes to trains only? I find it odd, but also amusing..

and this last stamp was also issued in 2010, commemorating the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Frederic Chopin, 1810-1849.

So people, that would be it...thank you for reading, thank you for dropping by, thank you for sending me postcards...thank you for everything! I hope that 2016 will be more fruitful blog-wise and that I will have the chance to proudly present my small little gems :)

Enjoy your New Year's Eve, wherever you are and whatever you do, and I'll see you next year! A big big big hug to you all!!!!