Chugging and chuffing their way around heritage lines across the country, steam locomotives continue to capture our imagination, says Octavia Pollock

Although born in Doncaster during the Second World War, Peter Fitton was brought up in the Fylde, hence his interest in the L&Y – his bedroom in St Annes overlooked the then main line to Blackpool Cen

August 2, 1980 – the day I saw my first High Speed Train. I can well recall that day, three months after I’d started spotting. We were on our way to Newquay for a family holiday. We didn’t have a car

JOHN HILLIER, Secretary of the Railway Photographic Society, looks at the parallel journeys of the railway and railway photography

Although some perceived the advent of the locomotive as a threat to the countryside, by allowing artists a quick and easy way to travel, it broadened their choice of painting horizons, discovers Carla Passino

We’re heading into a momentous year for railway preservation as the Talyllyn Railway marks 75 years since it was saved from almost certain extinction to become the first heritage railway. But how did the concept of railway preservation emerge and develop? MARK PEARCE digs deeper.