News

By Roger Melton THE North Yorkshire Moors Railway’s September 28-30 annual autumn steam gala celebrated the centenary of the line’s NER Q6 No. 63395 along with the 100th anniversary of the RAF. The 0-8-0 was newly returned to service, having had its overhaul completed just in time for it to run at the Severn Valley…

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GREAT Western Society founder member Jon Barlow has retired from footplate duties at Didcot Railway Centre at the age of 73. Jon was one of a quartet of 16-year-old schoolboys in 1961 who wrote a letter to our sister title The Railway Magazine proposing preservation of a Great Western Railway 14XX 0-4-2T. It was Jon…

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By Colin Tyson THE Bluebell Railway Trust has announced its second fundraising appeal in relation to the new carriage shed at Horsted Keynes. The ‘Wall-to-Wall’ appeal is part of a larger project entitled ‘Operation Undercover’ – with the aim of getting the Sussex railway’s unique and renowned collection of heritage rolling stock undercover and no…

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By Paul Appleton THE protracted construction phase of the Severn Valley Railway’s new refreshment room and toilet facility on Platform 1 at Bridgnorth has almost reached its conclusion, with external work completed and work on final fitting out of the interior underway as Heritage Railway went to press. It is hoped that the building can…

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By Geoff Courtney A DRAMATIC scene of LMS Princess Coronation Pacific No. 46235 City of Birmingham storming through the night under a leaden sky was the public’s overwhelming favourite at the Guild of Railway Artists’ annual Railart exhibition, which closed on September 30. The oil painting, by guild president John Austin, won the exhibition’s Picture…

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By Brian Sharpe Bad luck for Britain’s two best-known steam engines on East Coast Main Line railtours has resulted in an unexpected bonus for the Nene Valley Railway, with both engines finding themselves together on the line at the end of September. LNER A3 Pacific No. 60103 Flying Scotsman came to grief with an overheated…

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Was it really five years ago that a forlorn-looking Bahamas appeared on a low loader in the car park of Heritage Railway publisher Mortons at Horncastle, en route from Ingrow on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway to Tyseley Locomotive Works in Birmingham for its long-awaited overhaul to begin? On Friday, September 28, when Bahamas…

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Words and pictures by Brian Sharpe NORFOLK has always been known as fertile ground for discovering grounded pre-Grouping wooden coach bodies, with many examples still surviving on farms and in a variety of other locations. Further coaches are regularly being discovered, but a surprising twist is that no less than four GER coach bodies have…

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By Geoff Courtney ONE of the brass cabside numberplates from a unique GWR express locomotive that was described by a leading railway engineer and journalist as one of the few failures to emerge from Swindon and was even allegedly regarded as a ‘white elephant’ by its designer, is to go under the hammer on November…

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THE Welshpool & Llanfair Railway has loaned its diminutive Andrew Barclay 0-4-0T No. 2207 of 1946 Dougal to the Taiwan Sugar Corporation (Taisugar) for six months – and the locomotive may return to action, subject to the results of a detailed inspection. The initiative is the result of a twinning arrangement that has been agreed…

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