Big plans, big locos...
FIRST LINES
“In 2025 we in the UK will be able to witness a spectacle that until now we would needed to travel to South Africa to see...”
Photos: The delightful Bala Lake Railway could soon be going rather further, and Garratts are no longer the only massive 2ft gauge locos active in the UK... Photos: Joey Evans and Chris Parry/FF&WHR
Welcome to NGW188 and I must start by expressing my delight that we can bring you some really good news this month. Sense has prevailed and what appeared to many to be a ludicrous reason to turn down the Bala Lake Railway’s hopes of extending into Bala itself – basically it would bring more visitors to the town and they’d overpower its sewerage system, has been overcome.
After a lot of consultation, and a lot more money spent, the BLR has its planning permission. We can look forward to hopefully before too long seeing rails being placed on the nice new trackbed that was provided on top of flood defences installed next to the lake by Natural Resources Wales – funded by yet more money raised by the railway, with a lot of the donations coming from local people. When the first BLR train arrives at Bala Town Station, it can be pretty well assured of getting a warm welcome...
On the subject of extensions – in our last issue we indicated that this edition would feature the now major progress being made by a line located not too far from Bala, the Corris Railway, on the huge embankment necessary to allow it to extend south from its current headquarters at Maespoeth.
Well we have most of what we need for the feature, but we’ve held it for a month at the request of the railway so they can gather a little more information.
Instead this month we turn a focus on what I think is an often neglected area of UK narrow gauge history, the metre gauge lines of the Midlands ironstone industry. How many NGW readers have been to the excellent little museum at Irchester for example? We feature it this month.
There are also a fair few really big narrow gauge engines scattered throughout the pages of this issue. Now I love tiny locos – I’m a big fan of the Quarry Hunslet and the Kerr Stuart Skylark 04-2 is one of my faves (still no sign of anyone doing a new-build version of this lost class unfortunately...). But I must admit I am seriously looking forward to seeing the newly restored Kalahari 2-8-2 pounding up the gradients and round the switchback curves of the Welsh Highland Railway – in 2025 we in the UK will be able to witness a spectacle that until now we would needed to travel to South Africa to see – we are lucky people... Volunteer competition I’m writing these words just a couple of weeks after the Gala on my own line, the Welshpool & Llanfair, an event which to me always seems to mark the turning point of the year. The end of the operating season approaches pretty quickly afterwards and then the off-season where so much of the real work in keeping our lines running is done.
On many occasions in the past I’ve extolled the virtues of getting involved in the off-season – there
No 188 – Subscribe at www.narrow-gauge-world.co.uk are so many jobs to be done and not enough volunteers to do them all, and it’s a message I never tire of repeating, particularly following a conversation I had recently with a colleague whose role is partly about increasing the volunteer input to our railway.
My colleague made a very good point, in that the problem goes well beyond the fact that fewer people like to volunteer these days – unlike the pioneer days of preservation where it was seen as a bit of an adventure particularly amongst the younger enthusiasts.
No, what makes the issue more pressing today is that we are now facing competition for the dwindling volunteer resource from organisations that once never used volunteers, but are today pleading for them, such as hospitals and statutory bodies. And they can bring sophisticated recruitment strategies into play to get the people they want, making it all the more harder for our poor old heritage railways to attract sufficient numbers to keep themselves running effectively.
So I know I’ve said it many times before but the message never gets old – if you are able to get involved with your local heritage line, why not go for it? You may be surprised at how much fun you end up having – being on the inside of the narrow gauge is much better than simply reading about it, as many of NGW ’s readership will testify...
Andrew Charman
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