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THE heritage railway sector can hold its head high despite its enforced‘double shutdown’, in which the traditional post-new year closure period has also seen any semblance of public activity blocked by lockdown during the worst global crisis since the Second World War. Working within the strict confines of Government Covid-19 restrictions, right across the sector green shoots of a new spring are bursting forth, evident not least of all in the many locomotive and rolling stock restoration projects that are making heady progress in workshops across the country out of the public gaze. February has seen the latest locomotive to steam for the first time in the heritage era, in articulated Beyer Garratt No. 130, for example, and it is set to play its own part in the resurgence of…
NONE of us has a crystal ball to tell when passenger trains will return to our heritage railways, but the Severn Valley Railway is being positive in its outlook, announcing plans for a Spring Steam Up. It will take place for four days from April 15, featuring a star guest locomotive that had originally been planned for a visit in 2020. New-build Saint 4-6-0 No. 2999 Lady of Legend had originally been booked as the headline act at the SVR’s 2020 spring gala last April, but the event was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, once again, it has the chance to head the line-up as it makes its debut hauling trains away from its Great Western Society’s Didcot Railway Centre. The SVR resumed running trains last August using…
SERVICES across the heritage sector may have come to a complete standstill due to Covid-19 restrictions, but that did not stop its latest locomotive to be restored from running for the first time in preservation. February 5 saw Peter Best’s Manchester-built Beyer Garratt NGG16 2-6-2+2-6-2T No. 130 move under its own power following its completion at Dinas on the Welsh Highland Railway. No. 130 was constructed by Beyer Peacock in 1951, works number 7431, for South African Railways, which used it on the Port Shepstone-Harding branch in Natal until it was withdrawn in 1985. Like Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland Railways NGG16 Garratt No. 87, it was reimported to Britain for use on the abortive scheme to build a 2ft gauge railway at Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire. It ended…
GREAT Western Railway managing director Mark Hopwood CBE has accepted an invitation to become president of the Cholsey & Wallingford Railway. Mark lives nearby to Wallingford and has said that he hopes to be involved in as many activities as possible, especially if one of his beloved Class 50 locomotives visits. The position has been vacant since Sir William McAlpine passed away three years ago.…
THE Western Locomotive Association has launched an appeal to overhaul the bogies of Class 52 D1013 Western Ranger, with the aim of having it back in Severn Valley Railway traffic to mark the 60th anniversary of its entry into service in December 1962. Over the last few years, D1013 has benefitted from thousands of hours of volunteer help, including a full electrical rewire, component overhauls of such items as pre-heaters, fuel pumps, cooler groups, cooling fans, cardan shafts, exhausters, air receivers, cab desk rebuilds and internal paintwork, along with current work to overhaul its two 65 litre V12 engines, to at least the standard or better than BR would have achieved. Focus Attention is now being turned to the bogies, which will include D1013 being lifted for the first time…
THE Heritage Railway Association (HRA) is backing its members in their search for overseas supplies of steam coal with the end in sight for UK fuel. Britain’s heritage railways are being forced to accept that the battle for continued domestic coal supplies is lost, with environmental protestors winning the fight against opening new mines once existing ones close. Despite Government support for the continued burning of coal by heritage operators, the political tide elsewhere has turned decisively against the opening of new mines. HRA chief executive Steve Oates said: “Over the past five years, every planning application for a new mine which could have produced the kind of coal we need has been refused. “There are some limited stocks in reserve, and the last producing mine in the UK, Ffos-y-Fran…
