Letters

I HAS taken 37 years from the time the early Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway revivalists moved into derelict Toddington station, with the aim of restoring the entire 29-mile route from Stratford-upon-Avon to Cheltenham that had been lifted two years before, to reach the Cotswold tourist gem of Broadway. When Foremarke Hall triumphantly hauls that first public…

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This year much attention will naturally be focused on the 50th anniversary of the end of British Rail standard gauge steam haulage in August 1968. I remember the time well – looking forward to a caravan holiday at Salcombe’s South Sands, buying my first single records – from memory it was MacArthur Park by Richard…

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It is now 20 years since I moved sideways from an evening newspaper newsdesk into the world of railway magazine publishing. It was tougher than expected but a quickly very rewarding learning curve, and in those two decades so much has changed in the sector. Having followed the railway revival movement since my childhood, I…

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Next August, we will mark a half century since the end of British Railways standard gauge steam haulage. It would be easy to assume that the unswerving public passion for steam locomotives, particularly among the schoolboy trainspotters of the Fifties and Sixties, would have been quickly extinguished, as new hobbies were by necessity sought. Not…

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FOR those of us who remember the earlier days of standard gauge preservation, WR 4-6-0 No. 7029 Clun Castle stood out like a beacon of hope in a steamless world. Those open days at what was BR’s Tyseley depot had a carnival atmosphere of their own, and Clun was so often the star of the…

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As a photographer I find the changing colours of autumn irresistible, when the foliage turns to varying shades of gold, bronze, scarlet and brown, before it’s back to winter and the long dark nights. However, for me green has been by far the best colour this autumn. We have seen the main line passenger train-hauling…

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IT IS always a privilege to witness those legendary pinnacles of preservation. Sadly, I was not present to witness the Ffestiniog Railway working on its Llyn Ystradau deviation, nor the rebuilding of a part-sectioned No. 71000 Duke of Gloucester to a condition wherein it ran better than in BR days, nor the opening of the…

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CONTROVERSY flared earlier this year when the National Railway Museum announced that it was giving the LSWR Adams T3 4-4-0 No. 563 to the Swanage Railway. To many, including myself, giving away part of the National Collection was equivalent to handing over an NHS hospital lock, stock and barrel to the private sector. However, on…

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