IAN Riley’s Stanier ‘Black Five’ duo of Nos. 44871 and 45407 pass through the remains of the old Masborough station with the Railway Touring Company’s ‘South Yorkshireman’ on November 3.  The tour, which replaced a previously advertised but cancelled ‘Tin Bath’, took the two Class 5s from Blackburn to Manchester Victoria,

THE South Western Railway franchise could be nationalised this year, after new accounts revealed a loss of £137 million in the year to March 2019.The directors have also warned that cash support of £146 million from SWR’s owners FirstGroup and MTR would probably run out this year. The accounts conceded that

A CONTRACT to refurbish the 56 Class 390 Pendolinos on Avanti West Coast has been agreed with Alstom, which will carry out the work at its centre in Widnes.The refurbishment deal is worth around £127 million, but Pendolino-builder Alstom will maintain the fleet until 2026, also taking care of the

THE new cylinders for ex-GWR ‘2884’ 2-8-0 No. 3850 were delivered to the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway on December 6 following machining by Roach Precision of Brierley Hill. The delivery followed the arrival of the new front-end extension frames in mid-September, which had also been completed by the Brierley Hill firm. 

HITACHI’S Newton Aycliffe factory will deliver a new fleet of 23 trains for Avanti West Coast in 2022.  The completion of Intercity Express Programme (IEP) and ScotRail Class 385 EMU orders are on the horizon, and the £350million deal is a further boost for the County Durham facility after securing

Britain’s best-selling rail title The Railway Magazine is back for another month of award-winning photos, news, features and exclusives from the rail industry, past and present. This month’s The Railway Magazine features an insight into the retro look for LNER’s HST finale! Plus, Pacers and Mk4s are scrapped and we

PEPPERCORN ‘A1’ Pacific No. 60163 Tornado looks set to have another busy year on the national network in 2020 as more dates are added to the locomotive’s main line calendar. The first confirmed booking is the ‘Fen & Fells Flyer’ on April 4, which starts diesel-hauled in Cambridge, running via Ely,

CANADA’s largest rail operator – Canadian National (CN) – celebrated its centenary in 2019 and gave some of its locos a special ‘CN100’ livery. Here, ‘CN100’ livery GE ET44AC No. 3217 leads another GE-built loco (No. 3811) with an eastbound intermodal train north of Kamloops on September 28. 

CANADIAN Pacific (CP) has given several recently rebuilt locomotives its original original Tuscan red, grey, and gold livery, the first locos appearing in mid-October. The ‘new’ SD70ACU locos are rebuilds of earlier EMD SD9043MAC locos, retaining an overhauled EMD 16-cylinder 710 engine, uprated to 4,500hp, but with new electronics,

Former SNCF 2-8-0 No. 140C38 is seen at Bugeat, on the line between Limoges and Meymac, on September 8, complete with headboard for the loco’s centenary (it was built by Vulcan Foundry in 1919 [works number 3237]). Preserved ex-SNCF diesel BB 63895 is behind the steam loco as emergency back