ISSUE 134 IS OUT ON THURSDAY 18 FEBRUARY
Early survivor: Furness Railway 0-4-0 No 20, Britain’s oldest working standard gauge locomotive, in steam at Shildon’s Locomotion museum on 20 December. ANTHONY COULLS/LOCOMOTION
Preservation: the first century
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the meeting in a Birmingham hotel which led to the volunteer takeover of the all-but-moribund Talyllyn Railway the following spring. It was the world’s first preserved railway as such, but preservation had begun long before then, in 1839, when Canterbury & Whitstable Railway locomotive Invicta was withdrawn and saved for museum display. In a special feature, Robin Jones looks back at the roots of the railway preservation concept and how it gathered pace in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Reconstructing Beachy Head
An eagerly awaited event is the completion of the new-build Brighton Atlantic, a replica of No 32424 Beachy Head. The catalyst for the project to reconstruct a London Brighton & South Coast Railway Atlantic locomotive at the Bluebell Railway occurred in November 1986 when an article in a railway publication revealed the existence of four locomotive boilers which had been used for heating a woodworking factory in Maldon in Essex, and so another ‘impossible' project began. David G Jones, C Eng, MI Mech E brings the story up to date with full details of the latest progress.
And much, much more..
