Sam Hewitt

FIFTY years have passed since British Rail ran its last steam trains on the national network – and the heritage sector is thriving like never before. That was the message from the Heritage Railway Association’s 2017 Awards presentation evening which drew around 200 delegates to the MacDonald Burlington Hotel in Birmingham on February 10. Master…

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A ROAD in Darlington has been officially named after new-build Peppercorn A1 Pacific No. 60163 Tornado. Tornado Way is now the new name for a major commuter road in the town, previously and provisionally known as the Darlington Eastern Transport Corridor. It was first opened to motorists in 2007, linking the A66 with Darlington town…

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A NEW project to re-create a long-lost Welsh Highland Railway locomotive is set to be launched. Single Fairlie 0-6-4T Gowrie was built by Hunslet in 1908 for the WHR’s predecessor, the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railway, but is believed to have been scrapped in or around 1928. A group of engineers want to build a…

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THE Duchess of Cornwall gave an early start to the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway’s 50th anniversary celebrations when she took a trip in a special train over part of the line. Camilla rode in the Old Gentleman’s Carriage as featured in the 1970 EMI big-screen version of The Railway Children. Her visit to the…

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THE Bodmin & Wenford Railway has laid the first all-new piece of track work in its heritage era history. The track work is a new point leading into the sidings at the Walker Lines industrial estate to the south of Bodmin. All other track work on the line was inherited from British Rail or supplied…

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By Colin Tyson The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway has returned to providing a full service from February 1, following last year’s 104-day total shutdown of the heritage line amid the political unrest in the region caused by the pro-Gorkhaland campaign. Gorkhaland separatists (Indians of Nepali origin) want the area around Darjeeling to be split off from…

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By Roger Melton THE North Yorkshire Moors Railway has won planning permission for a £9.2 million improvement scheme, including a shed to house 40 carriages. The scheme, for which half of the funding is coming from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the remainder though legacies and public fundraising, is seen as the biggest-ever single investment…

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THE 16mm gauge live steam locomotive which starred in the Channel 4 show The Biggest Little Railway in the World, when it became the first to run over all 72 miles of Scotland’s Great Glen, is to go on display at the National Garden Railway Show in Peterborough on April 7. Filmed during June 2017…

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HIGHLAND Railway-built carriage No. 58A – which ran behind privately-owned 0-4-4T Dunrobin has been returned to service at Beamish –the North of England Open Air Museum. Built by Sharp Stewart in 1895 to a design similar to the Highland Railway W class for the 3rd Duke of Sutherland, Dunrobin was used until around 1920 to…

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FLAGSHIP locomotive WR 4-6-0 No. 7903 Foremarke Hall is rostered to haul the historic first Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway public train out of the Cotswold tourist honeypot of Broadway on Good Friday. Heritage Railway Association president and line patron Lord Richard Faulkner of Worcester will signal the opening of the new Broadway station by unveiling a…

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