News

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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LIFELONG enthusiast and locomotive owner Gareth Evans has just landed his dream job – as the new assistant editor of Heritage Railway. As a teenager, Gareth wrote the Younger View column for us in our early years and it led him to a career in journalism, editing Coach & Bus Week magazine for 11 years…

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DORSET’S 10¼in gauge Poole Park miniature railway has been closed following a derailment in April – and a reported “strike” by 40 volunteers and resignations of its management. It was understood that several youngsters were riding on the train when it came off the tracks, although no further details of the incident were available. On…

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‘Lost’ Brunel reservoir found in Devon UST when we thought, with the opening of a major new Isambard Kingdom Brunel museum in Bristol, we knew all of his major works off by heart – another has been discovered. Added to Box Tunnel, the Royal Albert Bridge, Maidenhead Bridge, Bristol Temple Meads, Sonning Cutting and the…

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