From the archive

The Elsecar Heritage Railway is one of Britain’s smaller standard gauge heritage lines, but as Mark Smithers reports, the only preserved railway in South Yorkshire potentially has an exciting future ahead of it. The history of the line goes back to the year 1850 when a single-track mineral branch was opened from Elsecar Junction, near…

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One name is synonymous with narrow gauge locomotive restoration and new-build projects. Mark Smithers reports on progress to be seen at an open day at Alan Keef Ltd. The name of Alan Keef Ltd will doubtless be familiar to most operators and fans of heritage railways, especially in the narrow gauge field, as its product…

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Few people are fully aware to what extent the railways, and certain sections of the army, were able to play such a large part in assisting the war effort during the two world wars. Brian Bell, who served at Longmoor in the 1950s, outlines how both the Allies and the Germans realised just how strategic…

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The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway is world famous as the setting for EMI’s immortal big-screen version of Edith A Nesbit’s novel The Railway Children. However, the heritage line is now leading the way with a ground-breaking new visitor attraction, Rail Story, based around a coach which has been converted into a classroom to teach…

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Friday, July 29 saw the passing of another piece of history on Network Rail. Martin Creese reports on the closure of the two former Great Western Railway signalboxes at Banbury. The last mechanical signalling on the former GWR and now Chiltern Trains main line from Birmingham to Marylebone; the two Banbury ‘boxes had been as…

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The National Coal Board railway in the Dulais Valley was unique. Geoff Silcock recounts some of the incidents that punctuated the line’s last few years, including an encounter with a then unknown journalist… into the 1970s two NCB Austerity 0-6-0STs; Hunslet-built Norma and a Bagnall dubbed locally ‘The Flying Dutchman’ regularly lugged 200-300 tons of…

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By Ian Crowder THERE were jokes a-plenty about the weather as some 500 people gathered at the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway’s Toddington station to witness what many thought that they might never see. The joke is that on its first steaming last August, and subsequently, it always seemed to rain but no-one could complain about what…

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It’s no secret – Flying Scotsman is back with a vengeance, and similar to when it snatched the official 100mph steam speed record in 1934, is again making global headlines, and deservedly so. Tens of thousands of people turned out to watch its inaugural run from King’s Cross to York along its East Coast Main…

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Forty years ago the last surviving rural passenger branch line in Northumberland closed. This was the Haltwhistle to Alston Railway, which although earmarked for closure as part of the Beeching cuts in 1963, miraculously survived up until May 1, 1976. Trevor Gregg looks back at the history of the railway and its route through the…

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An eagerly awaited return to steam is the 0-4-0ST sold by the Great Eastern Railway in 1917. Mark Smithers reports on the overhaul being carried out at the Flour Mill. The world of railway preservation is full of stories of tragic near-misses in terms of locomotives and other items that should have survived, but for…

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