Features

Nicola Fox meets John Bate, an octogenarian Talyllyn Railway volunteer and employee, who has spent nearly all of his adult life working at the pioneering Welsh narrow gauge line, eventually rising up to the position of chief engineer. The Talyllyn Railway (TR) runs from Tywyn on the mid-Wales coast 7¼ miles up the Fathew Valley…

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In the three years since it reopened, the Borders Railway has become one of the great success stories, and an inspiration to other rail revival projects. Ardent Borders Railway supporter Ashley Butlin, who reported on the construction and opening of the line to Tweedbank, takes a look at the prospects for extending the line south…

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John Heaton FCILT samples loco-hauled trains in the north and the new short-formation HSTs in the west of England to provide a potpourri for this month’s Practice & Performance. The introduction of Great Western Railway’s 2+4 HST formations reminded train timers belonging to the appropriate age group of the April 1965 No. 1 hit Concrete and…

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Cliff Thomas reports on a special commemorative event which brought 19 Hunslet locomotives together in North Wales – creating a new record for one manufacturer. THE Ffestiniog Railway held a Hunslet 100 gala in 1993 that is still revered as a landmark narrow gauge event. Twenty-five years on and the formula was not merely repeated,…

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With so many new trains being delivered and electrification schemes shelved, Porterbrook and Brush Traction are using their engineering expertise to convert surplus Thameslink commuter trains into ‘go-anywhere’ bi-mode trains. Ben Jones visits Loughborough to see how the project is progressing. When you’ve invested millions of pounds in maintaining and updating trains to bring them…

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The Ulster Folk & Transport Museum at Cultra, near Belfast, is home to the largest collection of locomotives, rolling stock and trams not just in Northern Ireland, but in the Emerald Isle as a whole. Gary Boyd-Hope looks at the core collection and its origins, without which preservation in Ireland would be considerably poorer. IT…

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