News

THE two-mile Rhondda Tunnel on the Rhondda & Swansea Bay Railway is set to be revived as the longest underground cyclepath in Europe. The railway opened from Treherbert through the tunnel under insurmountable terrain to Port Talbot and Aberavon in 1890, and five years later was extended to Swansea. It later became part of the…

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A Grade 2-listed Victorian landmark on the West Coast Main Line near Rugby is being preserved for decades to come by Network Rail. Repair and maintenance work has been carried out inside the Great Northern Shaft which was built to provide light and ventilation inside the 1½-mile-long Kilsby Tunnel in Northamptonshire. A huge scaffolding structure…

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FURNESS Railway 0-4-0ST No. 25 has been donated to the Furness Railway Trust. No. 25 is an unrestored sister locomotive to the trust’s A5 class 0-4-0 tender engine No. 20. When the type became obsolete on the Furness Railway, they were sent back to maker Sharp Stewart and converted into industrial saddle tanks for use…

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SINGER Shirley Bassey flew in from Monaco so she could visit the Snowdon Mountain Railway for a very special ceremony on May 17. The 81-year-old star, who was born in Bute Street in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay, was said to have held back tears when she unveiled a carriage named after her at the line’s waterfall…

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The Lynton & Barnstaple Railway Trust has bought another half-mile of original trackbed near Lynton. The latest stretch is at Barbrook on the approach to the resort. The purchase reinforces the trust’s commitment to rebuilding the line from Woody Bay to Lynton after restoring services from Killington Lane to Blackmoor and Wistlandpound which has just…

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THE Flour Mill workshops at Bream in the Forest of Dean have begun the exploratory dismantling of the Swanage Railway’s LSWR T3 4-4-0 No. 563 to see if the former National Collection engine can be returned to steam. Staff at the market-leading expert in the restoration of Victorian steam locomotives have begun removing the boiler…

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IN the year when the nation is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of BR standard gauge steam haulage, the Mid-Norfolk Railway has opened the latest length of its new northern extension. On Friday, May 18, Dennis Howell’s WR 0-6-0PT No. 9466, which in recent years has made the surviving section of the GER…

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While many events will be held this summer to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of steam, another date might well be considered far more important – for it was six weeks earlier on June 29, 1968, that the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway launched its first public services, in doing so giving an…

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THE Aln Valley Railway (AVR) now has two operational steam locomotives for the first time. Hunslet Austerity 0-6-0ST No. 3686 of 1948 entered public service on the line over the bank holiday weekend of May 5-7 during a Branch End 50 steam gala, marking 50 years since the closure of the NER Alnmouth to Alnwick…

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PRUSSIAN blue-liveried Peckett saddletank Kilmersdon may have often been viewed as a ‘sideshow’ at its home at Washford station on the West Somerset Railway, giving shunting demonstrations at special events. However, in Cornwall, what was the last steam locomotive to work at Kilmersdon Colliery and within the Somerset coalfield has acquired immediate superstar status, as…

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