From the archive

Bill Parker’s Flour Mill workshop at Bream, which is widely renowned for its steam locomotive restorations and overhauls, celebrated its 20th anniversary with a stupendous gala at the nearby Dean Forest Railway. The event saw three of its best ‘customers’ return to thrill the crowds at one of the most successful events in the line’s…

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One of the first branch line closures by BR, the Haughley to Laxfield branch, lay dormant for 40 years until it became the subject of an unlikely revival. Peter Brown visited the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway and reports on its progress. J15 0-6-0 No. 65447 hauled the very last passenger train on the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway…

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  In another occasional series of historical reviews of ‘Big Four’ locomotive engineers, Cedric Johns highlights the career of Frederick W Hawksworth, who succeeded Charles Collett in 1941… In retrospect, the final years of Frederick Hawksworth’s engineering career at Swindon were cut short by political events beyond his control when the 1945, postwar general election…

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From our 2016 archive Few heritage lines have quite the history of this narrow gauge line in Poland. Andrew Rapacz reports on a successful tourist operation on a railway which has served a number of different European countries since it was built. Bieszczady is an area in the extreme south east of Poland which has…

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FROM OUR ARCHIVES: 2016 The world’s most famous steam locomotive running on the world’s most popular heritage railway – under blue skies with plenty of sunshine: the North Yorkshire Moors Railway played host to Flying Scotsman in its first visit to a heritage line since the completion of its £4.2-million overhaul. Tickets were sold out…

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FROM THE ARCHIVES By Geoff Courtney Top international auction house Bonhams is remaining tight-lipped as to why it withdrew an original Flying Scotsman nameplate from sale just days before it was due to go under the hammer. The plate from the preserved LNER Pacific was to star in a prestigious ‘gentleman’s library’ auction in London…

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FROM THE ARCHIVES The Darlington North Road locomotive works served the railways for 103 years but closed due to the demise of steam on April 1, 1966. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the closure and the successful transformation of the nearby Hopetown workshops into the new Darlington Locomotive Works, Maurice Burns reflects on the…

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The Rosedale branch was very close to the North Yorkshire Moors line. Geoff Courtney delves into the history of a a remote railway outpost that closed down in the 1920s. It is only a small, seemingly unimportant, line on an original, mid-1920s’ railway map that hangs in my study. Although published by the GWR –…

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