Essential reading for today's rail enthusiast

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  • LT Museum sends last surviving prototype 1986 Stock to Coventry

    LT Museum sends last surviving prototype 1986 Stock to Coventry

    by

    Sam Hewitt

    –

    THE London Transport Museum has decided to permanently relocate its unique 1986 Stock vehicle to the Electric Railway Museum, situated a couple of miles outside Coventry. Car No. 16 is unique in that it is the only surviving example of the 16 prototype vehicles constructed during the mid-1980s as the basis for a new fleet…

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  • Welsh Government pushes the case for light rail

    by

    Sam Hewitt

    –

    Bidders for the next Wales and Borders franchise are being asked to consider alternatives to electrifying the existing Cardiff Valley routes. BIDDERS for the next Wales and Borders franchise will be expected to look at plans for the Cardiff Metro project and evaluate whether light rail operations will provide a better value for money solution…

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  • Downturns leads DB Cargo to cut jobs

    by

    Sam Hewitt

    –

    The decline in coal and steel traffic has led to redundancies at Britiain’s biggest rail freight operator DB Cargo. THE collapse in demand for carrying coal to electricity generating power stations, combined with the weak output from steel producers, has resulted in a 30% cutback in DB Cargo’s UK workforce of 2943 people as the…

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  • Eurostar cuts services and fleet as revenue falls

    Eurostar cuts services and fleet as revenue falls

    by

    Sam Hewitt

    –

    THE number of international services operated by Eurostar is to be reduced by 8%, with a subsequent reduction of 80 jobs. As a result, a number of the Class 373 ‘Three Capitals’ trainsets built by Alstom and introduced in 1992 are to be scrapped. The measures are a response to falling passenger numbers and income…

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  • Tebay tankers revisited

    Tebay tankers revisited

    by

    Sam Hewitt

    –

    I AM just reading the October issue of Rail Express and I see on page 29 (Express Mailbag) there is a picture of some redundant bogie tanks being used as fuel storage at a motorway services. This is actually taken at the J38 Tebay Truckstop, not the nearby Westmorland motorway services, which is about a…

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  • The art of railway photography

    The art of railway photography

    by

    Sam Hewitt

    –

    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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  • What future for the last ‘306’?

    What future for the last ‘306’?

    by

    Sam Hewitt

    –

    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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  • Not fade away

    Not fade away

    by

    Sam Hewitt

    –

    THE last surviving Class 306 EMU has had a fascinating career. Originally designed by the LNER in the late 1930s for planned electrification of the Liverpool Street to Shenfield line, the fleet of 92 units was delayed by the Second World War and so did not enter service until 1949 in the nationalised British Railways…

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  • Teething troubles for ‘Grand Hibernian’

    Teething troubles for ‘Grand Hibernian’

    by

    Sam Hewitt

    –

    The inaugural run of Belmond’s latest luxury train was hit by loco and stock problems on its journey around Ireland. The first run of Belmond’s new luxury train, the ‘Grand Hibernian’, was beset by a number of problems. Dedicated locomotive No. 216 was still considered to be unreliable for the high-profile inaugural journey, and so…

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  • Class 442s finish on Gatwick duties

    Class 442s finish on Gatwick duties

    by

    Sam Hewitt

    –

    SUFFICIENT Class 387/2s were in service during September to allow the remaining Class 442s to be withdrawn from Gatwick Express duties. The final booked ‘GatEx’ working was in the early hours of September 17, when No. 442413 worked the 1D02/00.02 Victoria to Gatwick and 1U07/00.50 return. This leaves just four peak-hour diagrams into and out…

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