News

AMBERLEY Museum has donated 3ft-gauge Peckett 0-6-0ST 1316/1913 Scaldwell to Southwold Railway Trust (SRT). The ex-Scaldwell Ironstone Quarries, Northamptonshire loco is substantially complete, but after many years of open storage requires extensive work to restore it to steam. SRT needs to raise around £1,500 to transport Scaldwell to Suffolk. With half the amount already promised,…

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VALE of Rheidol Railway’s 2-6-2T No. 9 Prince of Wales appeared in a new Great Western Railway green livery at the November 26-27 Warley National Model Railway Exhibition at Birmingham’s NEC. It has also reverted to its historic No. 1213, as carried from delivery in 1924 until 1948, and does not carry a nameplate in…

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BOTH of the two follow-on Variobahn trams ordered by Transport for London for London Tramlink in May 2015 are now in service – much earlier than the original schedule of March 2017, writes Keith Fender. The final set – No. 2565 – entered service on November 4, less than a week before the fatal derailment of…

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THE Railway Preservation Society of Ireland’s Dublin-based team is hoping that a new source of coal could be the answer to the shy steaming tendencies experienced by ex-DSER 2-6-0 No. 461. The society’s loco representative in Dublin, Gerry Mooney, ordered a trial batch of coal from the north-east of England for the first weekend of the…

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THE first train that will be eventually used on Elizabeth line (Crossrail) services has been delivered to Ilford depot, east London. ‘Aventra’ set No. 345002 was delivered from Bombardier’s Derby works by DB Cargo’s No. 67013 on December 9 and is one of 66 EMUs destined for service on Crossrail. Because the Crossrail route is not…

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ANOTHER two Class 373 Eurostar sets were despatched to the scrapyard during December. Half-set Nos. 3019/20 made the trip from Temple Mills to EMR Kingsbury on December 3 and were followed on December 15 by Nos. 3003/4. The exact number of sets to be scrapped has still not been confirmed, but expected to be between 17 and…

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By Keith Fender GREATER Anglia operator Abellio, together with industry partners Eversholt, Wabtec and Vossloh Kiepe, launched the first of the production batch of ‘Renatus’ (Latin for ‘born again’), refurbished Class 321 EMUs, on December 16. The first train – No. 321304 – is fully internally and externally refurbished, but not yet using the new traction…

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MAJOR changes at Govia Thameslink Railway’s Hornsey depot have been completed with the modernised depot ready to take on three new fleets of trains worth £1billion. Hornsey will be one of two new locations to maintain the Class 700 Thameslink trains when they operate from Peterborough and Cambridge through Blackfriars and beyond. The upgrade is…

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  IN early October Botswana’s main copper and nickel mining company Bamangwato Concession Limited (BCL) was put into liquidation, with depressed global prices for metals being blamed. The Selebi-Phikwe copper mine was closed and more than 4,200 workers and several steam locomotives now have a very uncertain future. BCL has operated a variety of steam…

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