Colin Churcher 2020

One of the exquisitely restored and maintained locomotives at Statfold Barn Statfold Barn is an offshoot from the Hunslet locomotive manufacturing company. It is located near Tamworth.  I visited Statfold in September 2014. At that time admission was by invitation only but this has been changed to cover several open days in the year. Statfold have developed an excellent reputation for quick and thorough rebuilding of smaller locomotives and have even build a number from new. The line has two gauges, two foot and two foot six inches. There are three main areas: - a main line run of about 1.5 miles - a grain store, now a museum and storage space - a delightful garden railway I visited the line in 2014 while staying at York. Rather than repeat what I already wrote please see my blog written in 2014: Saturday 13 September - Statfold Barn Railway There have been a number of changes since my visit - all good! The first Beyer Garratt #K1, which was repatriated from Tasmania and spent much...

A pure Great Western lower quadrant signal complete with finial in foreign territory at the Crewe Heritage Centre I have spent a lot of time in the last few years at Shrewsbury and have used a Saturday to visit the Crewe Heritage Centre. It is a quick trip on the puddle jumper from Shrewsbury although if one of the Manchester football teams is playing at home the train will be overflowing with barely a place to stand. The Heritage Centre is a short wak from Crewe station on what presumably was formerly railway land. Most of the exhibits are in the open air  However this class 47 in the original paint scheme is under cover. They were good locomotives to ride - quiet and very smooth riding. This is part of the ill-fated Advanced Passenger Train (APT), a tilting experiment which had problems and the design was eventually sold to Italy, I believe, which developed them into the Pendolinos that are used through here. But the real joy at Crewe is the signalling exhibits. This is the panel...

In looking for pictures of the Llangollen Railway, a heritage line out of Llangollen I realized that I have only been there once and covered it in a blog in 2013. Rather than re do I will post the link to my earlier blog. When I visited the line ran only as far as Carrog.  It has subsequently been extended to Corwen. The map also shows Chirk, Ruabon and the Pontcysyllte aqueduct. Here is the blog http://colinchurcher2013.blogspot.com/2013/09/tuesday-24-september-llangollen.html

  Shrewsbury coat of arms on the old Market Hall Date carved in a wooden beam in a house on Swan Hill This will be a little different - a look at Shrewsbury as a railway junction.  The station is located partially over the River Severn which describes a loop in which the town was built. The line to the east (right) runs to Wolverhampton and Birmingham. The line running south (bottom) branches at Sutton Bridge Junction for Hereford and south Wales and the Cambrian Coast line through Welshpool. To the north is the line to Chester with the line to Crewe and Manchester diverging to the north east. In addition the route of the Shropshire and Montgomery Railway is shown in black. There are several good pubs, my favourite is The Three Fishes which always has Timothy Taylor's Landlord on tap. There is also good eating. These are hand reared pork pies Shrewsbury is a good place to observe the old mechanical signalling. This web site is an excellent resource for this https://www.roscale...