Features

Just how nimble are today’s locos and units, and what’s the quickest off the mark? A Virgin ‘Pendolino’ is this month’s target for Neville Hill in the shadow of the Jodrell Bank radio telescope. COULD Britain’s most sophisticated squadron service InterCity set, the Class 390 ‘Pendolino’, challenge the EMU leaders of our 0-60 table? Well…

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British Rail arguably took the first steps towards privatisation in 1982, over a decade before it actually began, when the company moved from a geographic structure based on regions to one focused on separate business sectors. The biggest impact was to be on freight operations, as ‘Industry Witness’ describes. British Rail made a dramatic and…

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Thirty five years ago this February, one of British Rail’s most interesting operations came to an end. Steve Morris looks back at the Holyhead Breakwater Railway and the Class 01 shunters that were based there. FEBRUARY 1982 saw the end of one of British Rail’s more enigmatic loco fleets – the Holyhead Breakwater Class 01s.…

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Chiltern Railways is now running services through to the main Oxford station, competing with Great Western Railway for commuters to London. Robin Whitlock describes how the project was realised. CHILTERN Railways announced Project Evergreen 3 in August 2008, with the aim of running a regular passenger service from Oxford to London Marylebone via Bicester. The…

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February 1977 saw the withdrawal of the last Class 52 ‘Westerns’ in BR service. To mark the 40th anniversary of their demise, David Russell looks back at the run down of these popular diesel-hydraulics. THE ‘Westerns’ were, without doubt, the first diesel locos to attract a large following. While the other diesel-hydraulics based on the…

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There were those that said we wouldn’t last more than a few issues, but over 20 years after our launch in 1996, Rail Express is still going strong and this month we pass the 250 issue milepost. Here’s a look back over some of the key moments in our history so far. THE story of…

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The Engine Shed Society held its 2016 Annual General Meeting at Loram in Derby. Dave Richardson describes the visit. ENTHUSIASTS leaving Derby on trains heading towards Nottingham or Leicester have a choice: eyes right for Loram UK (the former Derby Technical Centre and, more recently, RVEL), or eyes left for Etches Park depot. Eyes right…

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Lee Davies looks back to the dying days of British Rail to describe life working ‘J’ turn coal trains from Tyne Yard. IN 1994, the year that privatisation of British Rail began, its then freight subsidiary Loadhaul decided to close the depots at Sunderland South Dock and Blyth Cambois. The work for these depots had…

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Sixty years ago in 1957, and after nearly a decade of dithering by those in charge, the first of the new diesel fleets entered traffic as part of the Modernisation Plan for British Railways. Rail Express looks back to those heady days of hit and miss designs in the rush to start replacing steam. THE…

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FOLLOWING the demise of steam in 1968, railway photography entered something of a ‘dark age’ when many star names had put away their cameras, and publications often could not see beyond a standard front three-quarter view of an approaching train. In an attempt to rectify this, the Phoenix Railway Photographic Circle was set up in…

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