Heritage Railway Issue 338

IN 1825, Britain inspired the globe by attaching one passenger coach to alengthy rake of coal wagons and running it as the opening train of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. The crowds marvelled – and so did the rest of the planet. The self-propelled transport revolution had begun and a new age of human society dawned. To recreate that inaugural modern train two centuries to the day, attracting a crowd of about 100,000 – a figure said by those who attended to be a very conservative estimate – to Shildon, Darlington & Stockton, with a 21st century carnival atmosphere, again combined meticulous years of planning and honest hard graft, backed by strokes of genius and five-star-plus leadership. The globe could not help but to sit up and take notice again,…

THE first on the foremost: the replica 1825 Stockton & Darlington Railway train, which generated waves of international headlines as it ran on the main line to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the world’s first steam-hauled passenger train, is to have an autumn season of running public services on one of Britain’s most popular heritage lines. The North Yorkshire Moors Railway, which has often topped the charts in terms of passenger numbers, will be offering trips on the train during October and November. As highlighted in our special feature on pages 44-49, the replica train spectacularly recreated the pioneering spirit of 1825 during the September 26-28 climax to the S&DR200 festival, drawing tens of thousands of visitors to Shildon, Darlington Stockton. After the conclusion of the event, the replica train…

A NATIONWIDE appeal to rediscover any surviving recordings of the voice of LNER Chief Mechanical Engineer Sir Nigel Gresley has been launched as part of the celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of his birth in 2026. Sir Nigel (June 19,1876 to April 5, 1941), one of Britain’s most celebrated engineers, is best known for designing the world’s most famous steam locomotives in Flying Scotsman, Cock O’ The North and Mallard, the latter holding the world speed record of 126mph for steam locomotives. While numerous photographs and newsreel footage of Sir Nigel exist, no known recording of his voice has ever been identified. Appeal launched The Gresley Society Trust, founded in 1963 to honour his life and works of Sir Nigel Gresley, is launching this appeal to locate any audio recordings…

FOLLOWING this year’s Stockton & Darlington Railway bicentenary celebrations and the nationwide Railway 200 programme, 2026 will be the next significant year for the heritage movement as it marks 75 years since the Talyllyn Railway became the first volunteer-run line anywhere in the world–and the railway has announced it will be holdingathree-day gala in May to celebrate the occasion. Although there were steam-operated tourist railways before the TR’s opening date of May 14, 1951, it was the first anywhere in the world to be solely run by volunteers. The establishment of a preservation society to finance and support the work required to restore and maintain the line and its stock in operational condition set a precedent, and while it is likely that the sector would still have established itself in…

THE £5 million project to build new Gresley P2 2-8-2 No. 2007 Prince of Wales has taken two major steps forward. At builder The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust’s 35th annual convention, held in Darlington on October 4, to which chairman Steve Davies MBE welcomed nearly 200 supporters, it was announced that the locomotive’s boiler is now complete and ready to be delivered from the DB Meiningen works in Germany at the end of October, allowing for logistics planning and customs processes. Certification body TUV Thüringen attended the works to witness the hydraulic test and announced it was satisfied, before fixing a CE mark to it. On display in the trust’s Darlington Locomotive Works was the P2’s completed tender. Timken attended in September to install the roller bearings onto the balanced…

A STAR of the Severn Valley Railway’s autumn steam gala (feature, pages 86-89), GWR Collett 0-4-2T No.1450 and matching autotrailer W238 have been sold by Pull Push Limited to an unnamed buyer. Originally numbered 4850 by the GWR, No. 1450 was built at Swindon Works in 1935 for work on small branch lines. The 4800 class was renumbered in 1946, becoming the 1400s. Seventy-five examples were built and the first rolled of the production line in 1932. Under BR, they were classified 1P. After a working life totalling 823,012 miles, No. 1450 was withdrawn from Exmouth Junction shed in May 1965. Bought by the nascent Dart Valley Railway, now the South Devon Railway, it became the line’s mainstay during the 1970s and 1980s, spending its early heritage era days running…