News

SWANAGE Railway volunteers are celebrating after winning a major civil engineering award for the restoration and upgrade of a three-mile section of railway enabling a trial passenger train service to run from Swanage to Wareham for the first time in 45 years. The Purbeck line has won the annual Institution of Civil Engineers’ South West…

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THE East Lancashire Railway (ELR) has unveiled its blueprint for the £600,000 redevelopment of its northern terminus of Rawtenstall station. An application for planning permission for the scheme, which will also provide community facilities, has been submitted to Rossendale Borough Council. The plans include the erection of an L-shaped canopy spanning the entire length and…

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THIS year’s steam trips on London Underground metals were a total sell out – with a waiting list drawn up to fill seats for ‘no shows’. The hugely successful summer steam trips were organised by London Transport Museum and London Underground and saw four trips a day run to Amersham. The first trip of each…

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By Cedric Johns and Robin Jones FLYING Scotsman’s eagerly-anticipated visit to the West Somerset Railway has been described as one of the most successful events in the heritage line’s history. No less than 10,700 tickets were sold for the Bishops Lydeard-Minehead-Bishops Lydeard trains running twice each day from Tuesday through to the following Tuesday, September…

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By Hugh Dougherty Ayr Station Hotel, built as an integral part of the town’ station in 1885 to a French Renaissance design, is under threat of demolition. The hotel, one of three built and owned by the Glasgow & South Western Railway, and operated after 1923 by the LMS, was an early sell-off by the…

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By Geoff Courtney The country’s leading railway artists were celebrating at their annual exhibition at Kidderminster Railway Museum on August 26 when nine paintings sold within hours of its opening. The exhibition, Railart 2017, put on by the Guild of Railway Artists, featured 61 works by 28 artists – from oil on canvas and watercolour…

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SIX brake failures have occurred on the Snaefell Mountain Railway in the past five years, the Isle of Man government has admitted. The figures were released following the latest incident, when Car No. 2 suffered a brake failure after it left the Summit terminus, as reported in our last issue. The Manx Director of Public…

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By Geoff Courtney AUSTRALIAN preservationists and enthusiasts who are reeling from the shock closure of one of the country’s leading railway museums and the controversial auction in August of two of its locomotives, and other rolling stock, have received another major blow with the decision by the museum’s liquidator to sell the museum’s most-prized asset,…

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Initial indications are that the North Norfolk Railway’s autumn steam gala was the best supported since the visit of Tornado back in 2013. Marketing manager Trevor Eady said: “Passenger numbers over the weekend of September 1-3 were good and apart from a short delay to services late on Friday the weekend went with almost perfect…

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THE latest Barry scrapyard locomotive to be returned to steam will run in the identity of a long-gone sister when making its gala debut BR Standard 5MT 4-6-0 No. 73156, the rebuild of which has been completed at the Great Central Railway’s Loughborough shed, will take the identity of No. 73084 Tintagel. The GCR’s October…

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