Features

By Ian Crowder THERE were jokes a-plenty about the weather as some 500 people gathered at the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway’s Toddington station to witness what many thought that they might never see. The joke is that on its first steaming last August, and subsequently, it always seemed to rain but no-one could complain about what…

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It’s no secret – Flying Scotsman is back with a vengeance, and similar to when it snatched the official 100mph steam speed record in 1934, is again making global headlines, and deservedly so. Tens of thousands of people turned out to watch its inaugural run from King’s Cross to York along its East Coast Main…

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Forty years ago the last surviving rural passenger branch line in Northumberland closed. This was the Haltwhistle to Alston Railway, which although earmarked for closure as part of the Beeching cuts in 1963, miraculously survived up until May 1, 1976. Trevor Gregg looks back at the history of the railway and its route through the…

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An eagerly awaited return to steam is the 0-4-0ST sold by the Great Eastern Railway in 1917. Mark Smithers reports on the overhaul being carried out at the Flour Mill. The world of railway preservation is full of stories of tragic near-misses in terms of locomotives and other items that should have survived, but for…

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Could the record-breaking success of the Fairbourne Railway’s Centenary of Steam Spring Bank Holiday gala weekend, which saw four of the line’s original 15in gauge engines return to the now-12¼in gauge outfit, pave the way for a new dual-gauge incarnation? asks Michael Whitehouse. With a pop on the whistle, Fairbourne once again echoed to the…

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