News

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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GREATER Anglia (GA) has shown the trade press the first bi-mode multiple unit (BMU) which is being built by Stadler in Switzerland. When Abellio won the re-tendered franchise which will run from October 2016 to 2025, it announced a major fleet upgrade comprising of 1,043 new vehicles that would be formed into 169 multiple units…

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STATFOLD Barn Railway’s open day on March 24 presented 18 locomotives in steam, together with the diesel ‘Goose’ railcar and battery-electric Burton and Ashby Light Railway Tram No. 14 in operation. The significant development of the museum building (ex-Grain Store), unveiled to invited guests during inauguration of Statfold Narrow Gauge Trust on March 10 (RM…

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HAMPSHIRE Narrow Gauge Railway Trust’s Bagnall 0-4-0ST Wendy will provide steam at Hampton & Kempton Waterworks Railway’s (HKWR) ‘Hanworth Loop’ line this year. Wendy will be covering for HKWR resident Andrew Barclay 0-4-0ST Darent, which leaves at the end of May for boiler repairs, including fitting a new front tubeplate, and seems unlikely to return…

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THE RPSI’s ‘Branchline Explorer’ railtour ran almost as planned on April 7, taking more than 300 passengers and three General Motors Class 071s over rare track and branches between Dublin, Waterford and Limerick. Retro-liveried class pioneer No. 071 was in charge of the first leg, departing Dublin Connolly two minutes late at 08.47. The train ran…

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By Hugh Dougherty and Gary Boyd-Hope NORTHERN Ireland Railways (NIR) celebrated 50 years of providing train services with a special steam excursion from Belfast Great Victoria Street to Whitehead Excursion Station on April 1. The charter was hauled by the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland’s recently restored GNR(I) ‘Q’ 4-4-0 No. 131. The event marked the…

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RESTORATION of the one-time flagship of the long-defunct Coventry Steam Railway Centre is well into the reassembly stage at the Williton works of West Somerset Restoration as attention turns to the locomotive’s boiler. Hudswell, Clarke 0-6-0T No. 1857 (built 1952) has never steamed since entering preservation in 1975, and is undergoing a contract restoration by Ryan…

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ON June 29, 1968 ex-Turner & Newall (Trafford Park) Hawthorn Leslie 0-4-0ST Asbestos (2780/1909) worked the first trains at the new Chasewater Railway following the Railway Preservation Society – West Midlands District’s move from its previous base at Hednesford. Fifty years on and Bill Parker’s Kerr, Stuart 0-4-0WT Willy (3063/1918) is expected to help the…

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NEW-BUILD Riddles ‘3MT’ 2-6-2T No. 82045 became a mobile locomotive on April 17 when the frames were united with the coupled wheels for the first time at the Severn Valley Railway. Amid biting winds and an all-pervading drizzle the frames were lifted from their concrete pad and gently manoeuvred to where the three 5ft 3in-diameter wheelsets…

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