Sam Hewitt

VISIBILITY problems stemming from the curved windscreen in the driver’s cab of the new-build Class 385 EMUs is the latest stumbling block to hit the replacement for the Class 170s DMUs on the flagship Glasgow Queen St to Edinburgh route. An issue of seeing double signals has been found during testing of the trains over…

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EASTLEIGH Lakeside Steam Railway (ESLR) in Hampshire is holding a special event on June 16-17 to mark the 80th anniversary of the opening of the legendary Surrey Border & Camberley Railway (SB&CR), and the locos built by HCS Bullock. A similar event was staged in June 2013, and again provides the largest collection of locos…

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IT IS 50 years since Roger Marsh built the original minimum gauge railways Type ‘F’ 0-4-2T Tinkerbell and the 7¼in-gauge Moors Valley Railway in Dorset will be holding a special celebratory event over the weekend of September 22-23. Tinkerbell was a landmark design being a sit-in narrow gauge steam loco for the 7¼in gauge. It…

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January 28 saw more trams running through the centre of Manchester, with those from Manchester Airport to Deansgate-Castlefield now travelling through to Victoria, while services from MediaCityUK to Piccadilly have been extended to Etihad Campus. Both of these journeys use the original route through the city centre, with the only service currently using the Second…

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SINCE 2015, Victoria State rail infrastructure manager V/Line has been leading a programme of gauge conversion for the network of mostly freight lines that serve the Murray Basin region north and west of Melbourne. In total, 1,130km of route will be converted to standard gauge, or in the case of the Maryborough-Ballarat-Geelong route equipped as…

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A SPECIAL train ran in November to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the ‘Spirit of Progress’ train that linked Melbourne and Albury (and eventually Sydney). The streamlined ‘Spirit of Progress’ express train was initially run by Victorian Railways (VR) on the 1,600mm broad gauge between Melbourne and Albury, starting in November 1937, where passengers changed…

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EXACTLY 100 years after it opened on October 22, 1917, a ceremony was held at Port Augusta (South Australia) to commemorate the opening of the Trans-Australian Railway between Port Augusta and Kalgoorlie (Western Australia). A week previously, a simpler ceremony had marked the centenary of the physical completion of the line at Ooldea, around 700km…

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US NATIONAL passenger operator Amtrak withdrew its former Santa Fe Pacific parlour cars from passenger service in early February. The cars were used in the Los Angeles to Seattle ‘Coast Starlight’ train. The last train using them arrived in Los Angeles from Seattle on February 5. The vehicles were some of the oldest still in…

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CONSTRUCTION has begun in the Argentine capital for new cross-city railways connecting previously isolated parts of the system. The network is around 900km, making it the biggest commuter rail system in South America, serving many suburban towns as well as the city itself. When complete a cross-shaped network of cross-city tunnels will connect six of…

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