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IN THE past month, the Heritage Railway Association has asked both the English and Welsh governments to allow one UK mine to remain open in order to produce the comparatively small amount of steam coal needed to supply our sector – rather than allowing a far bigger global carbon footprint to be created by shipping in the necessary fuel from as far afield as Australia, Colombia, South Africa, and the USA, when here in Britain we have so much beneath our feet. As we closed for press, HRA CEO Steve Oates told me that there had been no response from either. In this post-COP26 era of a vocalised and renewed determination to phase out coal, both governments will be mindful of the reaction from climate change protestors of being seen…
TWO locomotives which have little in common apart from their names came face-to-face at Didcot Railway Centre on Saturday, April 2 at the end of a return journey that lasted 22 years. A weekend of celebrations marked the official relaunch of repatriated iconic GWR 4-6-0 No. 4079 Pendennis Castle into traffic. Also invited for the occasion was Class 57 diesel No. 57604, which is part of the modern-day Great Western Railway fleet – and is also named Pendennis Castle. Cutting the ribbon to relaunch the 1924-built steam Pendennis Castle was none other than Lady Judy McAlpine, the widow of Sir William McAlpine, who in 1977 sold No. 4079 to Western Australia mining company Hamersley Iron for use by enthusiasts among its workforce who formed the Pilbara Railways Historical Society. Down Under…
THE temporary repainting of green-liveried Bulleid West County light Pacific No. 34027 Taw Valley into ‘royal’ purple to mark The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee on the Severn Valley Railway during its celebration of the occasion on June 2-5 – followed by the Commonwealth Games being held in Birmingham – has been carried out. Also to celebrate the jubilee, the Western Locomotive Association has renamed SVR-based Class 52 D1062 Western Courier as scrapped sister D1040 Western Queen for the 2022 operating season. Its first public appearance in its new guise will be at the May 19-22 spring diesel festival. Built at Crewe and entering traffic on September 20, 1962, the original D1040 was withdrawn on February 26, 1976, and cut up at Swindon that August. The SVR has announced that new-build GWR…
BRITAIN’S newest locomotive, a full-size replica of 1879-built Sharp Stewart 3ft gauge 2-4-0T Blyth, arrived at its Southwold Railway home on March 29. The original No. 3 Blyth, works No. 2850, worked on the legendary Suffolk line for its full 50 years until the line closed on April 11, 1929. Two separate plans to reopen the line – which might have made it Britain’s first heritage railway, 22 years before the volunteer takeover of the Talyllyn – quickly divided the support, and so the railway remained closed. The locomotives and rolling stock were left to rot at Halesworth until they were cut up for scrap in 1941. However, Darlington-based North Bay Railway Engineering Services have, over three years, built the £400,000 replica for the Southwold Railway Trust. It will be…
A BID to bring the headquarters of the new Great British Railways to Didcot Railway Centre has officially been submitted. Great British Railways (GBR) is a planned state-owned public body that will oversee rail transport in Great Britain from 2023, replacing Network Rail as the operator of rail infrastructure for Scotland, Wales and England. It will also control the contracting of train operations, the setting of fares and timetables, and the collection of fare revenue in most of England. GBR is currently running a competition to find a town or city outside London to host its headquarters, and the results will be released this summer. South Oxfordshire District Council and Vale of White Horse District Council lodged the bid on March 30. They decided to enter the centre in the…
TWO iconic Caledonian Railway locomotives have run together for only the second time in preservation – but rather than passing each other in the Highlands, they ventured to the south of England to do so. The Spa Valley Railway was the host for this historic event. Having already secured 1899-built McIntosh 812 class 0-6-0 No. 828 from the Strathspey Railway for a seven-month stay, officials went on to bag the Scottish Railway Preservation Society’s 1908-built McIntosh 439 class 0-4-4T No. 419, based at the Bo’ness & Kinneil Railway, which was also venturing south of the border to visit the Battlefield Line. However, for the Spa Valley, it didn’t stop there, opting to seize the opportunity to arrange its first four-steam locomotive gala in more than a decade. Accompanying the two…
