News

A WELSH Highland Railway NGG16 articulated Garratt sustained only cosmetic damage when it was involved in a collision with a car on a level crossing at Beddgelert. Yet the car was a write-off, and the driver was said to have been lucky to avoid serious injury. However, two carriages immediately behind the locomotive sustained damage…

Continue reading »

THE Severn Valley Railway has completed one of the biggest Engine House Visitor Centre locomotive reshuffles in preparation for its Last Days of Steam event on Saturday, August 4. A week before the ‘Fifteen Guinea Special’ ran, marking the last steam-hauled main line passenger train run by BR, the final ‘normal’ steam services were run…

Continue reading »

ONE of Britain’s lesser-known heritage railway venues, Twyford Waterworks near Winchester, held a narrow gauge gala on June 3. Volunteers at the Edwardian clean water pumping station have recently returned one of their three Babcock & Wilcox water tube boilers to steam to power the 1914 Hathorn Davey triple expansion steam pumping engine. The waterworks…

Continue reading »

THE diminutive vertical-boilered locomotive which hauled the first public steam train on the Leighton Buzzard Railway has restaged the feat 50 years on. June 29, 1968, is perhaps best known as the day when public services began on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, as described in our special feature on pages 82-86. However, on…

Continue reading »

THURSDAY, June 21 was a special day for members of the North Eastern Locomotive Preservation Group as it marked the official return to traffic of 1923 North Eastern Railway-designed P3 (BR J27) 0-6-0 No. 65894. A special train for members and patrons who had helped financially or helped with the overhaul at the Hopetown workshops…

Continue reading »

By Hugh Dougherty COUNTY Donegal’s Cashelnagor station, regarded as the remotest stop on the former Letterkenny & Burtonport Extension Railway, has been restored to its former glory, 71 years after the last train passed through its lonely, single platform in the shadow of Errigal mountain. Situated 56 miles from Derry, the terminus of the 3ft…

Continue reading »

By Geoff Courtney A former slate quarry locomotive that changed hands for just £30 in the 1960s has stepped into the breach at a west London steam railway after its resident engine was withdrawn for boiler repairs. With its regular 0-4-0ST Darent out of action until early next year, the Hampton & Kempton Waterworks Railway…

Continue reading »

Spending a weekend at a cement works probably isn’t at the top of most people’s priority lists – but it is for us enthusiasts. Ketton Cement Works, which lies three miles west of Stamford in the county of Rutland, opened its doors to the public on Saturday, June 30 as part of a celebration of…

Continue reading »

INVICTA, the Robert Stephenson & Co locomotive that came off the production line immediately after Rocket, has been found a new home. The 1829-built locomotive was supplied to the Canterbury & Whitstable Railway, hauling its inaugural train on May 3, 1830. Retired in 1836 as the railway made a retro-technological switch to cable haulage by…

Continue reading »

WHILE George Stephenson’s Rocket is based in its home town for the Great Exhibition of the North, one of his earlier locomotives has stolen some of the limelight. Stephenson’s 0-4-0 Killingworth Billy – thought to have been built in 1826 three years before Rocket – is a decade older than thought, a new study has…

Continue reading »