News

By Geoff Courtney An enthusiast’s novel protest that involved him running a home-made steam-powered trolley on a world-famous heritage line has reignited a fierce debate about the future of the route, which was operated by British-built steam locomotives for much of its service and subsequent heritage life until its closure nearly a decade ago. Andries…

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By Roger Melton NORTH Yorkshire Moors Railway members have expressed disappointment at ‘lenient’ sentences handed out to eight teenagers who trashed carriages on a historic train and caused £27,000 damage. The group broke into carriages on one of the railway’s 1930s Gresley teak set trains stationed at Pickering station on July 23 last year. Every…

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By Geoff Courtney VICTOR Goudie was one of the railwayana movement’s real characters, a collector who embraced what has been described as an “alternative lifestyle”. He was unmarried, didn’t work, lived with his mother until her death in 1990, owned a 1920s Rolls-Royce, and once walked from Inverness to Wick along the 78 mile railway…

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By Geoff Courtney CAMPAIGNERS who are central to the bid to have part of the former Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith Railway reopened to walkers after it was ravaged by floods more than two years ago, have until the end of June to raise £300,000 in order to unlock significant additional funding that could see their…

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Distant cousins met for the first time on Butterley station platform on May 12 when the Midland Railway – Butterley held a special ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of Sapper Alfred Amos on the Western Front. Descended from two of Alfred’s brothers, 15 members of the Amos family had travelled from…

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THE Tarka Valley Railway has been granted a lease by Devon County Council to occupy the first quarter mile of the former Southern Railway trackbed from Torrington towards Bideford. The lease, signed after many years of talks, is for an initial 12 years and is seen as a significant development in the railway’s goal to…

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THE Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway is to spend £90,000 on measures to protect its accident-prone Broadway bridge from collisions, amidst fears that it is only a matter of time before someone is killed. An old saying runs that lightning never strikes twice. Sadly, that is not true for lorries and the bridge which carried the line’s…

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FORMER Aberdeen Gasworks Barclay 0-4-0ST No. 2239 of 1947 Mr Therm has returned to its home in the Granite City’s Seaton Park playground. The move follows cosmetic renovation by David Ogilvie Engineering of Kilmarnock. The colourful ‘Pug’ arrived back in pieces on February 15, and was reassembled in situ over the next three days. It…

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The original Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway was a seven-mile 3ft gauge line opened in May 1875 to transport hematite iron ore from mines around Boot to the Furness Railway standard gauge line at Ravenglass. Passengers were carried until November 1908, making it the first public narrow gauge railway in England, but the line closed in…

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By Hugh Dougherty Country and western singer, ‘Big Tom’, who made the Irish hit, The GNR Steam Train famous with his aptly-named Mainliners showband, has died aged 81. Tom McBride who wrote and performed several songs about Irish railways was born beside the Great Northern Railway of Ireland’s Dundalk-Enniskillen line at Castleblaney in 1936 and…

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