Features

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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Christopher Westcott reports on the sole surviving Class 306 unit No. 306017, which is owned by the National Railway Museum but currently on loan to the East Anglian Railway Museum at Chappel & Wakes Colne in Essex. A VISIT to the East Anglian Railway Museum in early August reacquainted me with preserved EMU No. 306017,…

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Neville Hill visits the North Yorkshire Moors Railway to see how the performance of BRCW Type 2 No. 26038 compares to its former British Railways days in Scotland. EVEN in the busiest days of British Railways, it would have been unusual to see a ‘60A’ Inverness shed-plate anywhere near Pickering, North Yorkshire, and considerable imagination…

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For many years until the start of the 1990s, Rugby Cement wagons were a common sight around the country in mostly wagonload trains, as David Ratcliffe describes. THE Rugby Portland Cement Company was established in 1872 and was an important railfreight customer until 1990, contributing about 15% of British Rail’s total cement tonnage. Railbourne cement…

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AUGUST 2016 marked the 40th anniversary of HSTs starting in regular passenger service. Initially operated at 100mph until the timetable change on October 4, 1976, they were quickly taken to by the travelling public. However, HSTs were less readily accepted amongst the rail enthusiast community. They were seen as being responsible for the withdrawal of…

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