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Class 37-haulage may finally be at an end on the Wherry Lines, but there are still a few months left to appreciate another charming aspect of these routes from Norwich to Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft.

What operator Abellio describes in its timetable leaflet as a “Victorian era signalling system” was due to have been replaced in the Spring, but the usual delays in any railway infrastructure project means the semaphore signals will now survive until a three-week shut-down in February 2020. Continue reading “Nine Wherry distants signalling the line”

Built and opened in 1978 for a bargain price of just £50,000, Lelant Saltings Park & Ride was an instant success, and for more than four decades it was the place where thousands of visitors to St Ives left their cars and took a scenic four-mile train ride to the bustling artistic capital of Cornwall.

But Lelant Saltings is no more. Three months ago (in June 2019) the popular facility was replaced by smart new parking at nearby St Erth station, its 300 parking spaces now standing eerily empty and its half-hourly service to St Ives reduced to a Parliamentary level of one train a day in each direction. Continue reading “Britain’s newest ghost station”

Closure of the former Park & Ride site at nearby Lelant Saltings, and development of a large new car park south of the station, has seen some significant changes at St. Erth station, that delightful junction in South West Cornwall for the branch line to St. Ives. Continue reading “All change at St Erth”

Just three miles from the National Railway Museum is the start of one of Britain’s finest remaining outposts of mechanical signalling, the 17½ miles of railway route between Harrogate and Poppleton, a growing village north-west of York city centre.

After previously spending time photographing the signalling at Harrogate and other intermediate stations, including remarkable Knaresborough, my latest challenge was to visit three of the route’s gate boxes that are signalled by semaphores. Continue reading “A semaphore stronghold in North Yorkshire”

Exactly a year after publishing an account of a scenic stroll from Ryde to Brading, the last Saturday of summer (31 August 2019) seemed like an ideal time to pay a return visit to the ever-charming Isle of Wight.

Arriving on the island by hovercraft once again, I began where I left off last year and took a leisurely four and a half-mile walk from Brading to Shanklin, during which my challenge was to find a few off-the-beaten-track places at which to photograph Britain’s oldest passenger trains, Island Line’s 80-year old Class 483 units. Continue reading “A nice Wight railway ramble”

Only three weeks after its re-opening following a four-month closure to repair extensive flood damage, a week in North Wales working on the Ffestiniog Railway gave me an opportunity to sample summer Sunday services on the picturesque Conwy Valley line from Llandudno to Blaenau Ffestiniog.

But things did not go according to plan and my depressing experience, along with a number of similar experiences on the equally spectacular Cambrian Coast Line, has convinced me that new franchisee Transport for Wales (TfW) is not fit for purpose and that the Welsh Government should be urgently reviewing its tenure of the franchise Continue reading “Sunday woes in the Conwy Valley”

 

When it comes to provincial railway revivals in England, there cannot be anything to match the scale of transformation that has taken place on the 15½-mile long Chase Line in Staffordshire over the 30 years, since an initial ten-mile section from Walsall to Hednesford was re-opened in 1989.

Chase Line services quickly proved popular and were later extended to Rugeley Town (June 1997) and Rugeley Trent Valley (May 1998), initially continuing on the West Coast Main Line to Stafford, but cut back to Trent Valley in December 2008 to free up capacity on the WCML. Continue reading “Chase Line re-born”

Just three weeks after my previous failed attempt to sample the summer Saturday SWR service to Weymouth and Corfe Castle (6 July), it is profoundly disappointing to have suffered a similar experience again on Saturday (27 July)

Despite an assurance given to me the previous day from the SWR media team (who had kindly given me a ticket after the previous debacle) that the service would be running as planned, it was once again terminated at Salisbury due to “crew shortage”. Continue reading “SWR cancels its seaside special again”