Sam Hewitt

By Geoff Courtney A former slate quarry locomotive that changed hands for just £30 in the 1960s has stepped into the breach at a west London steam railway after its resident engine was withdrawn for boiler repairs. With its regular 0-4-0ST Darent out of action until early next year, the Hampton & Kempton Waterworks Railway…

Continue reading »

Spending a weekend at a cement works probably isn’t at the top of most people’s priority lists – but it is for us enthusiasts. Ketton Cement Works, which lies three miles west of Stamford in the county of Rutland, opened its doors to the public on Saturday, June 30 as part of a celebration of…

Continue reading »

INVICTA, the Robert Stephenson & Co locomotive that came off the production line immediately after Rocket, has been found a new home. The 1829-built locomotive was supplied to the Canterbury & Whitstable Railway, hauling its inaugural train on May 3, 1830. Retired in 1836 as the railway made a retro-technological switch to cable haulage by…

Continue reading »

WHILE George Stephenson’s Rocket is based in its home town for the Great Exhibition of the North, one of his earlier locomotives has stolen some of the limelight. Stephenson’s 0-4-0 Killingworth Billy – thought to have been built in 1826 three years before Rocket – is a decade older than thought, a new study has…

Continue reading »

CHANNEL 4 screened the fifth and final episode of its acclaimed Great Rail Restorations series on Saturday, July 7, as an alternative to the World Cup coverage elsewhere. While England were beating Sweden 2-0 in the quarter-final, the fifth and last episode of the vintage coach restoration and rebuilding series, outlined in issue 243, saw…

Continue reading »

By Geoff Courtney FORMER Kent & East Sussex Railway volunteer Robin Moira Wright has become a director on the railway’s board of trustees, an appointment hailed by the heritage line’s chairman Ian Legg as a “real coup”. In the 1980s Robin lived in Tenterden, where the KESR is based, and volunteered at that time as…

Continue reading »

Words and pictures by John Titlow Many railways have 1940s weekends, but how many re-enact a full blown battle along the lineside? The Severn Valley Railway held its popular 1940s event over the weekends of June 30-July 1 and July 7-8. One of the highlights was a battle that took place around 1.30pm on the…

Continue reading »

On Thursday, June 28, entertainer Jools Holland visited Pecorama in Beer to perform the honour of naming the 7¼in gauge Beer Heights Light Railway’s newest arrival. Jools lunched with Peco representatives in the Orion Pullman car after which he was given a whistle-stop tour of the model railway factory in the company of managing director…

Continue reading »

STEPHEN Middleton’s Nidd Valley Railway sole survivor Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0ST No. 1208 of 1916 Illingworth/Mitchell has officially completed its 22-year restoration with a naming ceremony. Based on the Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway, the locomotive’s name honours the former Lord Mayor of Bradford and local architect William Illingworth, who designed the city’s Odeon cinema…

Continue reading »