The end of the Season

This weekend has marked the end of the 2014 season at the Apedale Valley Light Railway. It has been a memorable year, generally for the right reasons. The highlights have included the opening of Apedale Road Station in April, the completion of the restoration of the Hudswell Clark steam loco in August, and (also in August) the return to traffic of the Kerr, Stuart Joffre locomotive. September saw the epic Tracks to the Trenches event, about which much newsprint and cyberspace pixels have been expended - and thank you to everyone for their kind and positive comments.
The season was rounded off with the Halloween weekend, which is a good opportunity for some fairly large-scale mucking about. Things were slightly spoilt by the discovery that we had forgotten to tell the P-Way gang working on the Field Railway that it was time to go home. Apparently, they had been there since 2011 waiting for a cup of tea and a Pot Noodle. Still, these things happen.
The replacement P-Way gang will now get to work on the Winter Maintenance Programme, along with the servicing on the passenger stock and all the other essential Winter Maintenance tasks. These will, hopefully, be complete in time for the Santa Campaign on December 13, 14, 20 and 21st December - find out more here. And, as ever, get in touch here.

Stanhope's Holidays

An engine which has been rather out of the limelight in these pages recently has been the Apedale flagship - "Stanhope". In all the fuss about Joffres and Hudswells and all that new-fangled nonsense, the old workhorse has rather gone to ground. In fact, "Stanhope" has been on holiday at the North Gloucestershire Railway at Toddington. The deal was that it came to Gloucestershire as a return load whilst the NGR Brigadelok was doing its stuff at Apedale during World War One. A little more shed space was, temporarily, also extremely welcome. The NGR is also host to a second Brigadelok - the second one is restored to the condition in which it worked for Sena Sugar. Not sure the face was a feature in Mozambique, but who knows. All good things come to an end, and "Stanhope" will be returning to Apedale in the next few weeks, as the NGR operating season has now come to an end with their annual Gala. The Brigadelok, by the way, is heading even further north - to Alston. This is a destination reached by roads which have the road haulier in a cold sweat. This coming weekend, 11 and 12 October, will be the last chance to see the Brigadelok in operation at Apedale - we expect to operate this plus the new Hudswell HC1238. See here for opening times etc, and (as ever) get in touch here.