Sam Hewitt

CONSTRUCTION work has begun on the £225million rail link that will connect Luton Airport with Luton Airport Parkway railway station. The Luton DART (Direct Air-Rail Transit) will be a double-shuttle, fully-automated people-mover, capable of operating 24 hours a day. It will be a cable-driven system offering a journey time of less than four minutes and…

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THE Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has announced plans for a ‘Congestion Deal’ that would see £80million spent on 27 extra trams. Extra money would also be spent on improving cycling lanes and other forms of public transport. Manchester has been listed as the second most congested city in Britain by the traffic data…

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THE 7¼in-gauge line at Plowmans Garden Centre, Ferndown, Dorset has had to cease operations. The garden centre is one of nine that has closed after the owning group went into administration on March 27. There were two railways here. The original was Plowmans Railway, with two Roanoke petrol locos. It ran for many years, but…

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THE Devon Railway Centre (DRC), near Tiverton, celebrates 20 years of operation with a gala on May 12-13. All three 7¼in-gauge locos will be running: Cromar White ‘Hymek’ Bo-BoBE, 4wPH Pfeifferbahn 20 of 1993, and the rarely used Bimpson Bo-BoPH ‘Rio Grande’. A platform shelter was built last year for the miniature line station, now…

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HASTINGS DEMU No. 1001 made the first of several planned main line trips on March 24, working from Hastings to Hereford via Westbury and Newport. By the time this issue of The RM is published, it will also have made a rare foray into East Anglia with the ‘West Norfolk Wanderer’ tour to King’s Lynn on…

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PATHFINDER Tours’ early-summer programme includes an attractive day out in the Peak District, heading for Buxton and the Hindlow branch on June 9. After an early start from Taunton, the train runs via Weston-super-Mare, Bristol, Cheltenham and Birmingham New Street, where the DB Cargo Class 66 gives way to a Colas Railfreight Class 56. The…

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TRAINS were suspended on the Leeds to Ilkley route in West Yorkshire between April 3 and April 9 after a landslip occurred at Springs Tunnel, south of Guiseley station. Around 80 tonnes of debris, including large trees, slid down a steep bank above the southern portal of the tunnel on April 3. The line was…

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SIGNALLER Steve Kennedy closed Ashton Moss North Junction box for the last time on April 14, marking the end of a small chapter in railway history, writes Richard Horner. Ashton Moss was the last Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway (LYR) Horwich-built, all-timber ’box, with its original frame, in use on the national network. It was erected…

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A £50MILLION infrastructure project on the busy North Wales Coast route between Chester and Holyhead has been completed by Network Rail, Richard Horner reports. The project included resignalling between Shotton and the Conwy Valley to offer greater resilience and reliability; replacement of track and ballast at Flint, Mostyn, Rhyl and Abergele & Pensarn; and installation…

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NETWORK Rail and Gatwick Airport Ltd are working on a major redevelopment of Gatwick Airport’s overcrowded rail interchange. The project is being supported by the Department for Transport (DfT). The station currently handles 19 million passengers a year, up from 7.5m in the late-1990s, and was recently described by Civil Aviation Authority chief Andrew Haines…

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