News

Words and pictures by Stuart Chapman MANY of Britain’s first railways – call them waggonways or tramways if you will – were built to link industrial sites with the nearest navigable waterway or port. Horse-drawn affairs, they were soon superseded by steam railways, which ended up taking much trade from canals and replaced them as…

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By Hugh Dougherty A SCOTTISH-based charity is offering its expertise and advice to the heritage movement on organising archives. The Ballast Trust is celebrating its 30th year of identifying, cataloguing and conserving Scottish business archives, especially those of railway, shipbuilding and engineering companies, throughout 2018, and wants the movement to know more about what it…

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THE South Tynedale Railway Preservation Society has obtained significant grant aid from the Power to Change Trust to restore PKP 0-6-0 Naklo. The £200,000 grant will also cover the creation of a new microenterprise delivering railway experiences on the 2ft gauge line for the first time. Starting in January, Naklo will be overhauled and rebuilt…

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By Geoff Courtney IT MAY be just a half mile long, but the Derwent Valley Light Railway in York is pulling out all the stops on March 25, when it will be celebrating the silver jubilee of the launch of its regular passenger service. It was in March 1993 that preservationists launched the service on…

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BIG-hearted supporters of the Severn Valley Railway raised £10,000 in just a week following the launch of an emergency appeal to rectify damage by graffiti vandals to a pair of coaches. The Severn Valley Railway Charitable Trust launched the appeal to meet the costs of rectifying the damage caused when vandals sprayed paint along the…

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By Paul Lewin LAST year was one of great progress for the Ffestiniog Railway’s 1867-built ‘Large England’ 0-4-0STT Welsh Pony. This locomotive had a working life of around 75 years – and has been awaiting its turn for restoration to service for a further 75 years. When it was withdrawn in 1939, with a defective…

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ST AUSTELL’S historic GWR station footbridge may make a 330-mile journey to a new home on the Bala Lake Railway. The footbridge may be re-erected at the 2ft gauge line’s western terminus of Llanuwchllyn. While St Austell residents have lost their battle to keep the wooden footbridge in situ in their town, Network Rail has…

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THE Middleton Railway has discovered that it has had an imposter in its midst for many years. Ever since the industrial railway’s Engine House museum opened in 2007, a small 4wDM , on loan from the National Coal Mining Museum at the site of Caphouse colliery, has been on display HE6273 was built in 1965…

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CAMBRIAN Heritage Railways is set to be given a £120,000 grant from Oswestry Town Council to develop a tourist line to Weston. Councillors have indicated support for the revivalists’ plan to run 1¼ miles from the former Cambrian Railways headquarters building at the town centre station in Oswald Road south to Weston, where a visitor…

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By Geoff Courtney A memorial headstone to a hero steam train driver has been unveiled more than half a century after he had been buried in an unmarked grave. The memorial, which features an engraving of a George Cross in recognition of him being awarded the prestigious medal for his life-saving actions, has been paid…

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