Features

Newspapers were carried on trains for a century and a half between the 1830s and the 1980s. Consultant editor Nick Pigott, who worked as a Fleet Street journalist for 13 years, tells the little-known story of the overnight services that rushed the news from press to public. ANYONE returning home by train from a late…

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MARCH 2017 ISSUE: For the past 50 years Tyseley has been a key player in the continued operation of main line steam in the UK, as well as one of the premier engineering centres serving the heritage sector. Gary Boyd-Hope examines the proposals that will safeguard Tyseley’s future as part of Birmingham’s cultural heritage, and…

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MARCH 2017 ISSUE: Greater numbers of women are taking up careers in the rail industry than ever before. There is an increasing proportion of the workforce which is female, and in the first of a two-part feature, Nicola Fox looks at how the gender gap is changing, and what the industry can do to introduce…

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MARCH 2017 ISSUE: Greensand Railway Museum Trust (GRMT) was formed in 2000 and completed restoration of Baldwin 4-6-0T WDLR No. 778 to steam in 2007 – the only operational Baldwin class 10-12-D in Britain, indeed the world, in as-built steam locomotive form. Now, the GRMT has its eyes firmly fixed on another ‘war veteran’ restoration project…

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MARCH 2017 ISSUE: Just eight days after a major accident on the newly electrified West Coast Main Line at Stechford, Birmingham, there followed another tragic event. Fraser Pithie looks back at what was, in its immediate aftermath, one of the most mysterious railway accidents of modern times. The incident involved a Class 55 ‘Deltic’ hauling…

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MARCH 2017 ISSUE: Newspapers were carried on trains for a century and a half between the 1830s and the 1980s. Consultant editor Nick Pigott, who worked as a Fleet Street journalist for 13 years, tells the little-known story of the overnight services that rushed the news from press to public. ANYONE returning home by train…

Continue reading »

Mark Smithers first visited the Amberley museum in 1987, and returned to the railway for its recent gala to review nearly 30 years of progress. FOLLOWING Amberley Museum & Heritage Centre’s summer gala in 1987, I wrote a feature covering what had been achieved during the first five years of railway preservation at this Sussex-based…

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In the fifth in our series of railway writers and artists, the life of the great communicator and railway historian supreme is recounted by Robert Humm. George Dow was a man of many parts. Professionally he was a career railwayman for his entire working life, much of it spent in public relations on the LNER and…

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With the Great Central Railway-based diesel brake tender nearing completion, Nick Pigott tells the story of a unique new-build project. MANY types of modern traction-era rolling stock have survived into preservation, but a notable exception is the diesel brake tender. These extraordinary vehicles were introduced in the early 1960s when British Railways realised that many…

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Still reeling as the implementation of Dr Beeching’s Reshaping the Railways programme of station and line closures pressed ahead, the railway experienced a bad year in 1967. In the first of a series marking the 50th anniversary of 1967 railway accidents Fraser Pithie considers a fatal collision on the West Coast Main Line at Stechford…

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