Search results

I thought the seaweed was loaded at Truro, rather than Falmouth? I seem to remember one inbound freight train carrying coal, and one outgoing working carrying scrap from shot-blasting in the dock yard. The latter ran on the night of 12 September 1996, the loaded train being so heavy that three...

Does anyone know what, if any freight traffic has been carried on the Falmouth branch in recent years. I know that, in the 1990s there were one or two freight workings, including loads of scrap from the dockyard and incoming loads of coal. There was also a limited amount of bulk traffic from...

I think the present right-wing, unelected Tory government will be hostile to railway investment. I have no confidence in them whatsoever - and Labour is now totally useless.

Miranda was a black-and-white film - I found it on the internet in order to identify the station, which was certainly Golant. The train in the Golant scene looks like a 57XX class 0-6-0PT hauling a single auto-coach.

Golant Halt appeared in a 1948 British film entitled Miranda, which starred Glynis Johns as a mermaid who captures a holidaymaker and persuades him to take her from Cornwall to London - she is loaded onto the train at Golant Halt and is then seen arriving at Paddington.

I agree that Christmas TV gets worse every year, but there were one or two gems this year, including last night's two-hour drama about the Brontes - Finn Atkins being particularly good in the role of Charlotte.

There is no shortage of material.

Has anyone mentioned Gobowen yet? Or Hest Bank (the latter is closed but still in situ).

Could be The First Sticker Book - Trains, "A delightful, interactive book on a subject that young children love. With over 150 stickers which can be used to complete scenes featuring freight trains, monorails, steam trains and underground trains".

The Great Northern Railway (Ireland) was an interesting example of a line that escaped nationalisation in 1948; as it had also avoided Grouping in 1923 it could claim to have been the last of the major pre-Grouping railways.

The D63XX (later class 22) diesel-hydraulic locomotives seem to have performed rather better than their diesel-electric counterparts; perhaps they had the benefit of regular care and attention from Swindon Works?

There used to be a station cat at Charlbury but, sadly, he wandered up onto the road bridge one day and got run over by a car.

I think the name was copied from the very first such "parkways", and it was supposed to imply a main line railway station with ample car parking for motorists. Bristol Parkway was one of the first (although I don't think it was the very first one).

Although probably best-known for comedy dramas such as I didn't Know You Cared she also appeared in films such as Haunted, with Aiden Quinn and Kate Beckinsale - she played an old gypsy woman who realised that the Kate Beckinsale character was in fact a ghost!

I am not sure if it has already been mentioned elsewhere on this site, but Oakwood and Wild Swan have also been sold in recent months, although their new owners intend to keep both "brands" alive.

In general, traditional railway publishers such as Oakwood, Wild Swan and Lightmoor Press would print about 2,000 copies and keep them in print until all were sold. Modern publishers such as Alan Sutton and their various off-shoots have much smaller print runs and, in many cases, they seem to...

I think many publishers are now down to print runs of no more than 500. They keep them in the shops for about 9-10 months and then sell the remaining stock to discount sellers. I think they can do this because the costs of modern printing are very low.

It is said that the Great Western Railway Journal will no longer be published quarterly, although it had been suggested that "special issues" may still occasionally appear - is any of this correct?

This sorry episode seems to me to be a classic case of "closure by stealth".

Does anyone know the present status of Norton Bridge station? I know that trains have been replaced by a "temporary" bus service, but is that service still running and, if not, has the official station closure procedure been initiated?