News

THE Dartmoor National Park Authority’s controversial masterplan for part of Ashburton – which would have scuppered any hopes of a northern extension of the South Devon Railway into the town’s Brunellian station – has been ditched. The plan, which included a 3.5-hectare mixed use redevelopment of the rundown Chuley Road area, which would have included…

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A DIESEL locomotive thought to have been written off in a blaze which destroyed much of Britain’s best-known and oldest pub railway, is back in service again. As previously reported, disaster struck at the 10¼in gauge line Fancott Miniature Railway, around 3.40pm on March 3, 2015. A fire, believed to have been started by a…

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The platform buildings at Gobowen station on the Shrewsbury to Chester line, part of the GWR route from Paddington to Birkenhead, have been bought by community organisation the Gobowen Area Improvement Group – and may be used to help start a new shuttle of heritage service to Oswestry. The buildings on both the Up and…

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The Severn Valley Railway’s August 12/13 Steam on the Road event will feature a Land Rover that can also run on the track. The 1957 Series 1 88in Land Rover, PSL193, owned by Mark Saville since 2002 and affectionately known as Plimsoll, has a 1997cc four-cylinder petrol engine, a four-speed main gearbox and a two-speed…

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A GB Railfreight Class 66 diesel has been officially named Royal Corps of Signals to mark a 33-year association with the Swanage Railway – during which 5000 soldiers have installed telephone and communications equipment along the Purbeck heritage line. The naming of No. 66756 was carried out at Swanage station on national Armed Forces Day,…

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THE influence of a local family on the fortunes of the Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway has been celebrated in the latest open wagon to join the line’s heritage fleet. John Lloyd Peate was a coal merchant based in Llanfair Caereinion, and when the railway opened in 1903 he ordered five private owner coal wagons…

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The Snowdon Mountain Railway’s 1896-built 0-4-2T No. 5 Moel Siabod is back in traffic following a £60,000 refit. The locomotive, built by the Swiss Locomotive & Manufacturing Co of Winterthur and sold to Britain’s only rack railway for £1500, had been out of action since 2000. It has undergone a £60,000 refit and refurbishment of…

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THE award-winning Leighton Buzzard Railway is marking its 50th anniversary year with a £150,000 appeal to rebuild more of its ‘main line’. The 2ft gauge line in Bedfordshire was built to serve several sand quarries and to take the extracted material to a transhipment siding of the main line near the town’s LNWR station. There…

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WELSHPOOL & Llanfair Light Railway Hunslet 2-6-2T No. 14 is to spend much of the summer on display in the Ironbridge Gorge, following its appearance at the Tyseley Locomotive Works Castles open weekend. No. 14, which last ran in 2010, was built in 1954 for service in Sierra Leone, where it carried the number 85,…

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