Features

THE Bodmin & Wenford Railway has been successful in its bid to purchase Chiltern Railways ‘Bubble Car’ No. 121020 (55020), which was put up for sale after being retired from main line service in May. Its final run on the main line took place on October 13 when, together with classmate No. 121034 (55034), it…

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WHEN was the last time it was possible to see and ride behind eight different Class 31s in one day? That was the tempting prospect offered by the Nene Valley Railway for its ‘Class 31s @ 60’ gala on October 13-15, which brought together locos from around the country to work singly and in pairs…

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THE Ribblesdale Cement Company’s works at Clitheroe, which opened in 1937, is situated at the end of a short branch just north of the station on the Blackburn to Hellifield line – a branch that was then already serving the Horrocksford Lime Company. Outgoing cement was initially dispatched in bags, but in the 1950s, British…

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Ex-Derby Trainman, and now signalman, Tim Helme describes life through the changing seasons at his post on the Derby to Stoke line, where there is much to contemplate between the passing trains. IF you want to conjure up an image of a classic mechanical signalbox, Scropton Crossing may well be it, with cable pull semaphores…

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Following our look at the Western Region last year, this month we delve into the Rail Express archives again to dig out some rare and unseen images taken on the London Midland Region in the 1950s and 60s. Many of them have never been published before, and include classes and locations long since gone. The…

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Closed as a through route in March 1984, the line between Lichfield and Walsall was once an important freight artery to the industrialised West Midlands and to the marshalling yard complex at Bescot, as David J. Hayes describes. THE South Staffordshire Railway (SSR) line between Lichfield and Walsall via Brownhills was opened in April 1849,…

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Just how nimble are today’s locos and units, and what’s the quickest off the mark? Neville Hill returns to the Cambridge line in search of the now venerable BR-built Class 317s. THE Class 317s are a product of British Rail in the early 1980s, so younger readers might be forgiven for writing them off as falling…

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Now that the Colne Valley Railway has purchased its own trackbed and land, plans are pushing ahead on more visitor attractions and a longer running line. IT has been a tense few years. In 2015, the landowner informed the Colne Valley Railway – based near Castle Hedingham on the picturesque Essex/Suffolk border – that he had…

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The once extensive network of fuel oil deliveries is now reduced to a few as required workings. David Ratcliffe looks back at the history of these services, which peaked in the early 1970s. FUEL oil, one of the heavier and less volatile of the petroleum fractions obtained during the cracking of crude oil, was primarily…

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