NEWS - With the British Railways Board announcing that it is 'examining its options' for the Vale of Rheidol line, we report who is in the takeover queue. Plus full chapter and verse on steam's forthcoming return to the Fort William-Glasgow main line - and how the Queen came face to face with Princess Elizabeth at Crewe. These and many more stories of the month, on six pages.
GALLERY - Photo-featuring NELPG's K1 No. 2005 at work on the West Highland extension - the first K1 to set foot there in 30 years, plus, for the second time in two weeks, Green Arrow on an East Coast Main Line run that most photographers missed!
REPATRIATION OF AN M7 - Back 'home' again in Dorset after its years of incarceration in America, LSWR M7 0-4-4T No. 30053 is soon to receive the enthusiastic ministrations of the Swanage Railway's loco restorers. Trevor Heard, of the 'Southern Repatriation' group which brought 30053 back to Britain, puts the M7 developments into context.
THIRTY FIVE YEARS BETWEEN - If you tote a camera and can't resist a challenge, see if you can pick up Dick Blenkinsop's gauntlet and match a yesteryear steam photograph with a modern day one. He's just done it, almost to the centimetre - with a gap of 35 years between shots!
CREWE WORKS, THROUGH THE EYES OF A 1950s LOCO-SPOTTER - Crewe Works was 'holy ground' to trainspotters in the short-trousered, gaberdine-and-mackintosh loco building days of the 1950s, casting a spell upon those youngsters privileged to have been party to official visits there. Geoff Rixon continues our theme 'Crewe: the Steam Years', with recollections of his first, magical visit to the Works as a locospotter in 1953 ...
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