Table of contents for March 2026 in Rail Express

EASTERN Rail Services has begun converting a Mk.3b TSO back to its former First Class specification for use as part of its expanding charter fleet. No. 12180 will re-gain its original identity of No. 11084 once work on the vehicle has been completed at Great Yarmouth, which is expected to be in the Spring. Stripping of the Standard Class interior has already taken place and luggage racks with lights fitted, with dado panels due to be changed in advance of the fitment of Greater Anglia-style seats and carpets. The interior fittings from the three Mk.3b FO vehicles (Nos. 11092/93 and 11101) used to create the ‘Inspiration’ exhibition train were bought by ERS and these are being used in the conversion. The company is also looking at converting TSO No. 12176…

AN event organised by the 125 Group on January 23 saw three power cars unveiled in new liveries at UKRL, Loughborough. It marked the start of a year of celebrations to commemorate the introduction of the HSTs 50 years ago in 1976. 125 Preservation’s No. 43060 Heaton 150 now carries GNER livery. This power car was repainted into blue with ‘Railway 200’ branding during 2025, so has received a subtle livery change with new logos rather than being fully repainted. White GNER lettering, as seen on some early repaints, has been applied rather than the more common gold. No. 43060 had never previously carried GNER colours; it was part of the IMLP (Midland Main Line) pool throughout the period of GNER’s existence. Also now carrying the livery of one of…

OOGAUGE4mm scale 1998 to presentERA EWS No. 66096 by Bachmann was quite an unboxing experience. The vibrant colours of fresh EWS livery greeted me and it caused certain feelings of nostalgia. To think of EWS as a ‘fallen flag’ is strange considering that just around twenty-five years’ ago, it was fresh, new and shiny. Very much like the superb new Bachmann Class 66 that sat comfortably on the test track in the studio for assessment prior to putting this review together. At the time, the EWS Class 66 was almost universally hated for the dramatic cull of BR traction that came with the locomotives – the name ‘Red Death’ was not unjustified. Today, an intact EWS Class 66 is a thing of the past. It demonstrates that we live in…

OOGAUGE4mm scale 1954 to 1988ERA THE BR DIAGRAM 1/051 13t clay wagons enjoyed a long thirty-four year service history and for some wagons, that is not quite over, with a number being preserved on the Bodmin and Wenford Railway as a demonstration china clay train. A total of 875 wagons were built in seven lots at Swindon to Diagram 1/051 from 1954 until 1960. They were designed to replace GWR Diagram O.13 clay wagons, initially working alongside them and eventually fully taking their place. All but the first builds were vacuum-braked. Subsequently, unfitted wagons were retrospectively fitted with vacuum brakes and painted in BR bauxite livery, matching the rest of the fleet. The wagons closely matched the GWR design so they could work with existing china clay works infrastructure. By…

IN Victorian times, Cleethorpes was a hamlet named Cleethorpe with few tourists, mostly aristocrats arriving by stagecoach. Arrival of the railways and the hoi polloi was a source of consternation, stemming from 1858 when two excursions arrived at Grimsby with day trippers transferred on to Cleethorpe by horse drawn bus. The early railway was built for the fishing port of Grimsby (then the largest in the world), but over the years with the thriving seaside resort at Cleethorpes, and the industrial centre at Immingham – hopes were high for a mixture of freight and passenger traffic. The line to the Lincolnshire Coast was originally opened by the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway and the railway’s main source of revenue was coal, and to a lesser extent fish from Grimsby. The…

IN a surprise move, the long-established Railway Touring Club, based at Kings Lynn and founded in 1997 by Nigel Dobbing, has announced it is entering the modern traction railtour market. The company is renowned for operating scores of steam-hauled specials every year, including the ultimate ‘Great Britain’ weekly tour around the UK which this year runs from April 18-25. Diesel tours so far announced are: ‘Atlantic Voyager’ on Saturday, May 2; ‘Aberystwyth Coastal Voyager’ on Saturday, June 6; ‘Mazey Day’ on Saturday, June 27; ‘Slate Miner’ on Saturday, August 15; and ‘Cornish Branchliner’ on Saturday, September 19. RTC says there are more tours to be confirmed. RTC’s Managing Director, Kelly Osborne, who has been with the company 23 years, told Rail Express that they have been considering entering the modern…

CRAVENS Heritage Trains Limited (CHTL) has revealed that its three-car unit, has passed initial tests as part of plans to restore the unit to working order. The unit is formed of two 60 Tube Stock (TS) Driving Motor cars and a 38 TS trailer vehicle which last carried passengers in 2014 and has been stabled for many years on an outside road at Ruislip depot. Prior to assessment work to restore the unit, during the first week of January the unit was shunted around the Ruislip Depot site in order to undertake a full brake test. CHTL confirmed the unit passed these tests. The next stage will be to assess the overall condition of the unit, when decisions can then be made about its long-term future. Timescales when any of…

WITH four Class 99s in the country and two more of the dual-mode machines expected in early February (Nos. 99005/006), GB Railfreight has already begun to reduce its active fleet, storing all three of its Rail Services Class 47/7s, Nos. 47727/739/749 at Leicester LIP, its sole Class 59 No. 59003 at Eastleigh Works, as well as five Class 69s, Nos. 69003/007/011 at Longport and Nos. 69012/015 at Whitemoor Yard. An excess of motive power is not unusual in the months following the end of the Railhead Treatment Train season, which has been combined with a slowdown in the number of unit transfers and increased competition from other operators. Notably all nine locomotives currently remain in their respective operational pools, with the two Whitemoor Class 69s available for shunt duties if…

CLASS 20 The venerable English Electric Type 1s enter another year and eight examples were active during the first month of 2026. Nos. 20007 and 20205 claimed the largest slice of work by moving Transport for Wales Class 398 units between Old Dalby, Kings Norton and Pengam. On January 7 for instance, they collected No. 398024 from Old Dalby moving it to Kings Norton and then on to South Wales the following day. A similar trip followed on January 15 and 16 with No. 398019 and with No. 398020 on January 20 between Old Dalby and Kings Norton. On January 27 they took No. 398015 forward from Kings Norton (passing Chepstow at 12.35) after the tram-train unit had travelled from Old Dalby in the care of Rail Adventure Class 43s.…

SMALLER locomotive classes are steadily being picked off by Bachmann through its EFE Rail brand. It is not afraid to tackle short-lived and often unreliable prototypes such as the Class 74. The latest in the English Electric Class 23 Bo-Bo locomotives introduced in 1959 and fitted with a Napier Deltic T9-29 engine which was, in effect, a half-sized type of the engines fitted to Class 55s. They are to appear in ‘N’ gauge which is a welcome development for 1960s BR modellers working in the scale. The locomotives worked on outer suburban services on the Great Northern from Kings Cross along with trains on related routes. The locomotives were built with train reporting discs and end doors which were replaced with four-character headcodes during refurbishment intended to improve the poor…

OOGAUGE4mm scale FACTORY INSTALLED HM7000 TXS sound is now standard in the Hornby ‘OO’ and ‘TT:120’ gauge Class 37 models, with sound equipped Class 37s arriving in the ‘OO’ gauge ‘Railroad’ range in recent months. Included in the batch of three models is the now legendary Police No. 37093 which takes us back to the 1984 ‘Train Jam’ advert where the Class 37 was filmed chasing a pair of HST power cars. All three models were tested at the same time with default decoder settings and they were found to be consistent in their performance. Installed decoder The installed decoder is a 21-pin type wired to a speaker of 8 ohm impedance. There is no internal circuit board in the Hornby ‘Railroad’ Class 37 which means that the speaker is…

THERE ARE plenty of kits and 3D prints for standard lineside equipment cabinets, also known as rail location cases or cabinets or LOCs for short. It is always good to support small producers of lineside detailing parts as they are often as much an integral part of the hobby as the larger model producers. Layout size and complexity will come into play when it comes to lineside detailing and sometimes, buying sufficient parts to convincingly detail a large layout can be budget busting. The editor’s 4mm scale home-based layout project needs quite a few LOCs along with other lineside equipment. The cost was stacking up, even when some kits recovered from older layouts were refurbished and repainted. This project had several objectives. One was to take the opportunity to empty…

THE national infrastructure operator has begun a pre-market engagement exercise for a batch of between 80-130 track panel carrying wagons. While the Network Rail documentation describes the new order as an addition to the existing fleet of YKA Osprey, with around 125 examples still on the books it seems more likely that they are intended to replace them. The YKAs are the most recent reworking of a design that can trace its origin back to the London Midland & Scottish Railway. The company’s ‘Salmon’ rail carrier was adopted by British Railways which ordered over 800 updated steel-floor and bolster-fitted versions between 1951-60, with the majority being unfitted from new with the rest vacuum piped only (TOPS coded YMO and YMP). Many were air-braked in the 1980s with the bolsters removed,…

JANUARY 26 saw the introduction by East Midlands Railway of an additional ‘Aurora’ working, increasing the number of daily diagrams from two to three. On the first day, Nos. 810006/10/13 from the fleet of five units accepted for service were in action. Of the above three sets, Nos. 810006/10 had been in traffic since December, along with No. 810012. No. 810013 had appeared for the first time earlier in January, its first passenger working being the 1C17 07.00 Sheffield-St Pancras on January 14. Another set, No. 810011, made its debut outing in revenue-earning service on January 5. Two other sets, Nos. 810008/09, are being used for staff training from Derby Etches Park, while Nos. 810003/04 are presently based at Melton RIDC where they are undergoing trials on the Old Dalby…

SWIETELSKY has further expanded its portfolio of customers by agreeing a new shunter hire contract with petrochemical giant Phillips 66. Announced just before Christmas, this will see a single Class 08 provided for use in the sidings complex at Humber Refinery with the locomotive due to arrive as this column was compiled. The selected machine is No. 08653, which finally had its protracted overhaul completed at Worksop at the end of 2025. This originally began at Shackerstone in mid-2023 and has seen the shunter completely stripped down and refurbished, including bodywork repairs and installation of an overhauled power unit and auxiliaries. It is a remarkable comeback for No. 08653, which has not worked since July 2010 when it was stored by DB Schenker at Bescot after developing engine problems. It…

OOGAUGE4mm scale 1961 to 1983ERA ‘PRESTWIN’ WAGONS have been chosen by Clark Railworks as a follow up to its remarkable ‘OO’ gauge demountable tank wagons and the resulting models have captured the unusual appearance of the prototype well. The company appears to target less common wagon types, particularly those that were built in small numbers. And it is doing it well as the latest models amply demonstrate. They are more complex than the demountable tank wagons, requiring considerably more components to model the discharge equipment and underframe fittings including eight-shoe clasp brakes. Anyone who has tackled the old Airfix kit will appreciate the subtleties and complexity of the ‘Prestwin’ wagons. Runner packs of three wagons with individual running numbers have been produced with six packs available covering the 1960s to…

OOGAUGE4mm scale 1902 to 1980sERA About the models THE NER 15t and 20t hopper wagons were constructed in huge numbers from 1902 to replace Chaldron waggons in a successful effort to boost wagon (and therefore train) capacity, improve turnround times for trains and reduce discharge times. The P6 wagon had a capacity of 15t and sides a touch over eight-foot in height. The NER introduced this wagon first to avoid overwhelming conservative-thinking colliery owners. The taller 20t Diagram P7 soon followed, with over 12,000 of them placed in service. Initially, the wagons were equipped with large wooden end stanchions which were extended below the headstocks to allow Chaldron waggons to operate with them. Further, the design included braking to allow safer use on curved inclines including the fitting of brake…

50 YEARS AGO… MARCH 1976 ■ 125 REACHES 125 THE FIRST of 27 production IC125 High Speed Trains for British Rail’s Western Region achieved its design speed 125mph during a high-speed commissioning run. Set No. 253001 hit its top speed between York and Darlington on March 5 during the test run from Derby to Morpeth. The first 27 trains were for use between London Paddington and Bristol/South Wales. The power cars were built at British Rail Engineering Limited’s (BREL) Crewe Works and the Mk 3 coaches at BREL’s Litchurch Lane works in Derby. ■ BOMB ATTACKS TARGET TRAINS THERE WERE several bomb attacks on the railway during 1976 which included one which occurred near London’s Cannon Street station on March 4. The empty stock from the 07.49 Sevenoaks to Cannon…

WITH potentially 750 new DART electric vehicles to be supplied by Alstom over a ten-year period and a contract for the latest batch of trains signed in December, details of the fleet of new X’trapolis five-car EMUs and BEMUs have been confirmed by Iarnród Éireann. The first part-order for 95 cars and currently being delivered, subject to battery issues being resolved, is for 13 BEMUs and six EMUs that are planned to enter revenue earning service in 2027. The second part-order for 90 cars, due to enter revenue earning service in 2028, comprises 18 BEMUs. The contract for the third part-order comprises 20 EMUs (100 vehicles) that are planned to enter revenue earning service in 2029. Together the order represents the largest and most sustainable public transport fleet order in…