Sam Hewitt

THE Mount Hooley Band played Bring Me Sunshine and the weather obliged as the first paying passengers since 1976 were carried into the South Tynedale Railway’s Slaggyford station behind the 110-year-old former Harrogate gasworks 0-6-2T Barber. On Saturday, June 9, the first passengers over the line’s 1¼-mile extension were treated to refreshments provided by the…

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CHANNEL 4’S new Great Rail Restorations series has been hailed as a major publicity boost for a large unseen aspect of the heritage sector. Presented by Peter Snow, best known as an analyst of election results, and motorcycle expert Henry Cole, the five-part series has followed the restoration from scratch of four historic carriages, before…

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TO mark the first anniversary of the Penny Salon at Ongar station during the Epping Ongar Railway’s June 8-10 steam gala, artist Malcolm Root FRPS unveiled his latest painting, depicting a Holden F5 2-4-2T in its final years of service with its two-coach push-pull train at Epping. It was inspired by the Ongar branch in…

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STEPHENSON’S Rocket is back in the town of its birth, ready to take a central role in the Great Exhibition of the North. The Tyneside-built icon has been moved from London’s Science Museum, its home since 1862, to Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s Discovery Museum, where it will be displayed from June 22 to September 9, next to Charles…

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JEREMY Hosking’s Locomotive Storage Limited has given an under cover home to two classic EMU sets that were forced to leave the Electric Railway Museum at Coventry after it closed. The 4-SUB set No. 4732 and LMS Class 503 set, plus a spare 4 EPB trailer No. 5176 in BR blue, have followed Jeremy’s A4…

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MARKET-leading heritage steam and diesel charter operator, West Coast Railways, stepped into the breach after problem-hit operator Northern Rail cancelled all of its services on the Oxenholme to Windermere branch, delivering an unexpected bonus of a loco-hauled shuttle service. Passengers across the north of England have endured thousands of cancellations and delays on services run…

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By Paul Appleton THE scheduled intermediate overhaul of Churchward 2-8-0 No. 2857 was completed on time for it to star in its own 100th birthday event at the head of a loose-coupled freight during the Severn Valley Railway’s Goods Train Gala over the weekend of June 2-3. At the same time, the locomotive’s comeback helped…

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THE Ivatt Diesel Re-creation Society – which is attempting to build a copy of Britain’s first main line diesel – has launched an appeal for £40,000 to buy and restore a pair of the correct bogies. The group was formed in 2011 to fill a major gap in modern traction preservation, by building a new…

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