News

A MEMORIAL to London Transport chief executive officer Frank Pick’s iconic designs, which have influenced London travel since 1906, was unveiled at Piccadilly Circus station on November 7. BAFTA-winning and Turner Prize-nominated artist duo Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell were commissioned to produce the new large-scale contemporary artwork, called Beauty Immortality, by Art on the Underground…

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AFTER 20 years of trying, the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway Trust has bought a house which blocks its way to the west. The trust has just completed the purchase of Fairview, a three-bedroom detached house, which stands at Parracombe Halt, and is the key piece of the land acquisition jigsaw in the planned extension to Blackmoor. The…

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Exclusive: By Geoff Courtney THE innovative and eagerly awaited Mail Rail project in central London took a major step forward at the end of October, with the delivery of new trains, which next year will take visitors for the first time through the subterranean depths of a former railway that linked the west of the…

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Leading steam and diesel photographer Norman Preedy is celebrating the acquisition of what he describes as one of the most significant collections ever to have come onto the market. Norman, 73, has bought about 25,000 negatives from renowned photographer Brian Green, who photographed lineside scenes over more than six decades, from Nationalisation until three years…

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One of the Guild of Railway Artists most successful annual exhibitions closed its doors at the Severn Valley Railway on October 2. It followed five weeks of substantial public interest and buoyant sales of the works on display, which culminated in two paintings being sold even as the exhibition was being dismantled. The positive vibes…

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The First World War military role of one of the UK’s most prolific and famous locomotive builders has come under the spotlight after the unearthing of rare photographs of the factory manufacturing tanks and munitions alongside steam engines. This combined war and peace scenario was played out at the North British Locomotive Company’s Springburn site…

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THE Royal Victoria Country Park at Netley, next to Southampton Water, is a popular place for walking and relaxing… and near to the tea rooms and chapel is the mile long 10¼ in gauge Royal Victoria Railway, which operates at weekends throughout the year and daily in the school holidays. Trains are nearly always hauled…

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By Maurice Burns The momentous occasion of celebrating 50 years of the North Eastern Locomotive Preservation Group as a volunteer society was duly marked in fine style over the last weekend of October, following a year of planning. Fifty years on, to the exact day in the exact same room at the Bridge Hotel in…

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By Phil Marsh The Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway has, without warning, been given just 10 working days to move seven items of rolling stock from the last 150 yards of the former Watlington branch. The written legal threat was issued by solicitors acting for Cemex, owner of the former Chinnor cement works and associated…

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THE Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway has crossed a county boundary for the first time, as its new northern extension has reached Worcestershire. Tracklaying on the extension to Broadway crossed the county line between Little Buckland and Peasebrook Farm bridges, at a point not accessible to the public. At the same time, the railway’s Broadway: The Last…

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