Features

As major projects begin to deliver big changes, Ben Jones summarises some of the key amendments that took effect from May 20. WIDELY touted as the biggest timetable change in living memory, the weekend of May 20-21 saw thousands of train services altered as various new routes and enhancement projects start to come to fruition.…

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Before the construction of powerful Pacifics and 4-6-0s by the ‘Big Four’, pre-Grouping 4-4-0s handled large swathes of passenger traffic. Keith Farr looks at performances of such locos under British Railways in the 1950s and ‘60s. This year will see numerous articles about the end of regular BR standard-gauge steam working half-a-century ago. Many such…

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Plans to reopen the Colne to Skipton line – which closed nearly 50 years ago – are gathering pace. Reinstatement would benefit passengers, with new and faster journey opportunities between parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, but also cut journey times for freight traffic and move it away from routes already nearing capacity. Graeme Pickering takes…

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A host of events with railway connections are set to mark 100 years since the end of the First World War. Craig Amess reports. This year sees the centenary of the end of the First World War. Railways played a crucial and differing role in each of the two major global conflicts of the 20th…

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The locomotives owned by Dinmore Manor Locomotive Ltd have earned themselves a reputation for reliability and good performance during their various spells in traffic. Yet their owning group retains a relatively low profile, conducting impressive feats largely ‘under the radar’. Gary Boyd-Hope went to meet them. On June 7 last year Collett ‘Manor’ No. 7820…

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Chris Milner concludes his interview with 100-year-old photographer Ron Buckley, who returned from wartime military service to a railway preparing for Nationalisation. AFTER leaving England in 1940 and serving with the Worcestershire Regiment, Ron returned home after demobilisation in 1945 after four-and-a-half years away – and to a very different railway. The ‘Big Four’ had…

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With new and refurbished trains on the way, a rolling programme of electrification, and a devolved Government committed to further expansion, Scotland is showing other regions of the UK how to deliver a better railway. Ben Jones met ScotRail Alliance MD Alex Hynes to find out what is in store for 2018 and beyond. New…

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This month’s Practice & Performance has an international flavour as John Heaton FCILT rides on the first timetabled Eurostar service from England to the Netherlands. The list of departures on the Eurostar screens at St Pancras International on April 4 provided a welcome tonic to observers who had sought expansion of direct daily services to…

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It was a relatively simple invention yet it revolutionised long-distance train travel for more than a century. Consultant Editor Nick Pigott dips into the subject of water troughs. IT’S a hot summer’s day in the steam era and you are relaxing in a Pullman car speeding along the East Coast Main Line. After a while,…

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Alan Barnes is a regular visitor to the North East. Here, he takes a look at the history of the Aln Valley Railway and its progress in extending one of Britain’s newest heritage lines, a project which has not had the easiest of starts. VERY little evidence remains of the railway lines which once served…

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