Heritage Railway Issue 332

TO say that the latest new feature taking shape on the Nene Valley Railway is a ‘silk purse out of a sow's ear’ is a gross understatement. At the line's Peterborough terminus, a forgotten station building that had for decades been enshrouded in the mists of time has been recovered piece by piece from its original site on one of the myriad of meandering branch lines in south west Lincolnshire, most of which closed as soon as a modest level of road transport was in sight. Having last seen passenger trains in 1929, Wansford Road station, which dates from 1867, became a private house and was later boarded up and forgotten, hidden in the cutting in which it stood However, a marvellous beyond-belief degree of. inspiration and initiative will now…

GWR 4-6-0 No. 5029 Nunney Castle is back on the main line after a decade out of action. Following the completion of its overhaul and running-in tests, No. 5029 hauled ‘The Chairman's Train,’ a private charter carrying owner Jeremy Hosking and his family on their annual Easter holiday land cruise around the UK. The first day saw Locomotive Services Limited Class 57 No. 57002 – which was named Winston Churchill at Paddington that morning – take the first leg of the 1Z29 10.42am Paddington to Kingswear charter to Bristol Temple Meads. There, the train was handed over to No. 5029, leading another LSL 57, No.57311 The Institution of Mechanical Engineers. The charter paused at Taunton to allow the Castle to take on water before continuing, arriving at Kidderminster 73 minutes…

HAULED by Merchant Navy Pacific No. 35028 Clan Line, the London Victoria to Bristol via Haslemere, Southampton and Salisbury first leg of the Railway Touring Company's ‘Great Britain XVII’ land cruise on April 26 became the final steam train to be signalled through by three retiring signalboxes between Farncombe and Petersfield on the Portsmouth Direct Line. The ‘boxes at Farncombe, Petersfield and Haslemere are nearing 50 years of service and are becoming less reliable and increasingly difficult to maintain. Later this year, a long-term programme of work to upgrade the signalling systems will be completed, with control of signalling being transferred from these ‘boxes to the Basingstoke Rail Operating Centre. This new digital signalling technology is part of wider upgrades between London and Portsmouth and aims to make the railway…

A £150,000 appeal to refit a ‘lost’ railway station that has been rebuilt eight miles away as a new joint entrance to two major heritage attractions near Peterborough city centre has been launched. As reported in Heritage Railway issue 322, the station building at Wansford Road, an intermediate stop on the Stamford and Sibson branch of the Stamford & Essendine Railway, has been dismantled brick by brick and re-erected at the Nene Valley Railway's Peterborough terminus, placed at right angles to the heritage line's track – where it will form a joint gateway to the adjacent Railworld Wildlife Haven. The 1867-built station, closed by the LNER to all traffic on June 29, 1929, lay in a deep cutting completely obscured by trees from the view of passing traffic on Sutton…

THE Weardale Railway has been used as a test track for the modern-day replica of the Stockton & Darlington Railway's opening day train of September 27, 1825 – and it looked exactly the part. The 1975-built replica of Locomotion No. 1, which hauled the world's first steam passenger train and which, as reported in Heritage Railway issue 331, underwent running tests on the Great Central Railway (Nottingham) in March, was brought to Wolsingham in early April alongside the new replicas of the pioneer passenger carriage Experiment and three chaldron wagons, which Northern Heritage Engineering Ltd of Darlington was contracted to build. The train is equipped to run on the modern main line and will run over the S&DR route from Shildon via Darlington to Stockton-on-Tees on September 26, 27 and…

THE 1722 Waggonway Heritage Group is to mark Railway 200 by celebrating Scotland's first railway. The community heritage project was created to interpret, preserve and enhance the route and associated industries and environments of the Tranent-Cockenzie Waggonway. The group has arranged a free evening at The Battle of Prestonpans Jacobite Museum in Prestonpans Town Hall, East Lothian, at 7.30pm on May 16 with a talk by historians Anthony Dawson and Ed Bethune, who will discuss the latest research and archaeological findings relating to the waggonway and its place in Scottish railway history. On Saturday, May 17, the group is planning a special day at its heritage centre on West Harbour Road, Cockenzie, from 10am to 11pm, with traditional skills activities including making trenails, quill and ink writing, donning historic costumes…