When ALFRED FISHER took off on a mission to ride the Tollesbury Line in Essex in the early 1950s, he had no idea of the drama to follow…

I believe I accompanied my mother on two separate visits to see her sister who lived in Saltford, east of Bristol, and in May 1954, on the second visit, as I always started my rail journeys from the f

If there is one principle that has been absolutely clear in railway preservation, it is that nearly anything is possible. Whether it has been facing daunting engineering challenges, restoring locomoti

Castlethorpe sits mid-way between London and Birmingham in the Buckinghamshire countryside on the West Coast main line just north of Wolverton. It witnessed the very beginnings of the railway age as t

Running along the western side of Southampton Water, the nine-mile Southern Railway branch line from Totton to Fawley has rarely attracted much attention from railway historians, but there is much of

This small, two-road engine shed stood just south of Penrith station and saw its significance steeply decline from the mid-1950s onwards, until it shut in 1962.