News

By Cedric Johns REPORTS that the Railway Touring Company had secured the use of Tyseley-based GWR 4-6-0 No. 5043 Earl of Mount Edgcumbe to head the first of this season’s ‘Royal Duchy’ excursions appear to have been over-optimistic. RTC’s Nigel Dobbing was hoping to take advantage of the fact that the Castle was standing without…

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A 1904 poster issued jointly by the South Eastern & Chatham Railway and the travel firm Thomas Cook was a top seller at a Transport Auctions of London sale in Croydon on July 1, going under the hammer for £1300. The poster featured a uniformed interpreter who provided services and assistance free of charge to…

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THE FIGHT between three of the Big Four to be top dog will be a highlight of the Great Central Railwayana sale at Stoneleigh Park on September 1. In the brown corner is Knight of the Thistle, in the green corner 603 Squadron, and in the maroon corner The Prince of Wales’s Volunteers South Lancashire.…

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By Geoff Courtney A steam locomotive nameplate that delighted regulars at a pub in Leamington Spa is to go under the hammer for the first time at an auction in Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire, on September 1. It is Knight of the Thistle, which was carried by Star class No. 4012 for more than four decades…

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THE Bala Lake Railway operated its first passenger trains to be hauled by a tender locomotive in the route’s narrow gauge era when 1863-built George England 0-4-0STT Palmerston visited for a week on June 18. A tender locomotive has not worked a passenger turn along the shore of Wales’ largest natural lake since Manors and…

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A WELSH Highland Railway NGG16 articulated Garratt sustained only cosmetic damage when it was involved in a collision with a car on a level crossing at Beddgelert. Yet the car was a write-off, and the driver was said to have been lucky to avoid serious injury. However, two carriages immediately behind the locomotive sustained damage…

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THE Severn Valley Railway has completed one of the biggest Engine House Visitor Centre locomotive reshuffles in preparation for its Last Days of Steam event on Saturday, August 4. A week before the ‘Fifteen Guinea Special’ ran, marking the last steam-hauled main line passenger train run by BR, the final ‘normal’ steam services were run…

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ONE of Britain’s lesser-known heritage railway venues, Twyford Waterworks near Winchester, held a narrow gauge gala on June 3. Volunteers at the Edwardian clean water pumping station have recently returned one of their three Babcock & Wilcox water tube boilers to steam to power the 1914 Hathorn Davey triple expansion steam pumping engine. The waterworks…

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THE diminutive vertical-boilered locomotive which hauled the first public steam train on the Leighton Buzzard Railway has restaged the feat 50 years on. June 29, 1968, is perhaps best known as the day when public services began on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, as described in our special feature on pages 82-86. However, on…

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THURSDAY, June 21 was a special day for members of the North Eastern Locomotive Preservation Group as it marked the official return to traffic of 1923 North Eastern Railway-designed P3 (BR J27) 0-6-0 No. 65894. A special train for members and patrons who had helped financially or helped with the overhaul at the Hopetown workshops…

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