Sam Hewitt

HERITAGE Railway and its sister title The Railway Magazine are to sponsor the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway’s May 26-28 spring bank holiday Cotswold Festival of Steam – which this year has the theme Give my regards to Broadway. The high-profile event will celebrate the railway’s extension into its new Broadway station – and topping the bill…

Continue reading »

THE Talyllyn Railway’s Barclay 0-4-0T No. 6 Douglas was unveiled in a brand new livery of RAF Traffic Blue to mark the 100th anniversary of both it and the RAF. Built to 2ft gauge originally for use at the Royal Naval Flying Corps airfield at Manston in Kent, a few weeks later, on April 1,…

Continue reading »

THE controversial sale of the Wensleydale Railway’s Aysgarth station has been accompanied by a major about-turn in the line’s short, medium and long-term strategies. The overall aspirations of the Wensleydale Railway Association when it was formed 28 years ago, to restore ‘real’ community passenger services and eventually rebuild the entire 40-mile trans-Pennine route linking Garsdale…

Continue reading »

By Cedric Johns It was meant to be a celebration: a Britannia Pacific working a train from Liverpool Street to Norwich, replicating the 1950s when class members were rostered to work East Anglian express services to and from London. No. 70013 Oliver Cromwell, the only member of its class in steam at present, was just…

Continue reading »

A NEW company has been formed to take the Great Western Society’s £1.5 million project to build a new 38XX County 4-4-0 to the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway. While affiliated to the society, the Churchward County Trust Ltd has been established as an independent company in its own right to build the 41st locomotive in the…

Continue reading »

By Geoff Courtney ON a bitterly cold first day of February, with rain hovering and low temperatures exacerbated by an icy wind, 70 or so people assembled in a Cheshire churchyard in honour of a railwayman who nearly 53 years ago sacrificed his life because he opted to do his duty. Wallace Oakes, a well-liked…

Continue reading »

By Geoff Courtney REVIVALISTS who are planning to restore part of a west London steam railway that closed more than seven decades ago are on the cusp of agreeing a lease with the trackbed’s owner. The 3½ mile 2ft gauge line was opened by the Metropolitan Water Board in 1916 and ran from a wharf…

Continue reading »

A giant of the railway world and a true gentleman By Geoff Courtney The omens were good for legendary railwayman Richard Hardy – who died on February 18 at the age of 94 – from the day in January 1941 he was offered an LNER apprenticeship at Doncaster by Edward Thompson. Richard, known to most…

Continue reading »