2011 Railway News

The Santa trains all ran to time and fully loaded on 10th & 11th of December. The 3pm train on the 11th had 10 full coaches and made King Arthur and Excalibur work very hard.

We have another steam engine - Victoria from the now closed Isle of Mull Railway staying with us until a new railway is opened in Scotland. She is a powerful engine only a little smaller than King Arthur. Together they are probably the two most powerful conventional engines of this size of railway. A series of Mull railway days are planned for 2012 whilst she is with us.

The extension to the covered picnic and party area is complete and is in use from September. The new adventure playground at the Lake opened on July 22nd.

The AGM of the ten and a quarter railway society was held at Rudyard on May 14th. A successful event saw the presentation of the miniature railway of the year award to the Mull & West Highland Railway.

The Easter and May bank holidays had good weather and were very busy. All the steam engines were in use with a two train service most days and sometimes 3 engines in steam. Waverley was also used on its own on a lighter second train on two days and performed very well.

Pendragon No.9 was dismantled for minor attention tothe boiler at the start of 2011. The boiler interior was acid washed and some stays welded up as we did with Merlin last year. The chassis has been cleaned and the locomotive turned round to face the same way as all the others. A repaint into a bright green livery is finished and looks great. It was back in use on the weekend of 9, 10 April on 7 coach trains. The weekend was very busy due to great weather and birthday parties on both days.

Trains ran on January 1,2,3rd. On New Years day there was no mains water supply so we still ran by filling the locomotive water tanks from the lake!! The supply has now resumed and trains are running as usual.

Construction of a new enclosed brake coach to match the two existing LTM coaches was started in January by LTM engineering. It will have seating for 8 passengers and a large guards compartment. It was delivered in August and taken into service.

All the railways 5 steam locomotives passed their annual boiler test ( 4 on 21st March) and are ready for service in 2011. Trains are running now on every Saturday & Sunday from late March to end of October.