Colne Valley Railway News

Congratulations to a team from Blackwater Preservation who pulled WD190 through the station area today to raise funds for the Dystonia Society. Many of the team regularly come to our events with fire engines, and Railway volunteer Natalie Halls also joined in. Pulling a 50 tonne loco uphill is not an easy thing to do but the team put all their effort into pulling the loco.

What a busy Summer, and how quickly it seemed to pass! Visitor numbers were up considerably for both July and August and September seems to be going the same way.  It's good to see so many people on site enjoying themselves. We were featured on BBC1 series A Taste Of Britain, this was filmed in July but we were asked not to name the programme until after it had aired on 9th September.  Brian Turner and Janet Street Porter spent a couple of hours on site. Work has started on WD200 with the boiler tubes being removed ready for inspection - roll on the day when we have two Austerity saddle tanks working together.

We have reached the final three in the Best Small Attraction category in the Essex Tourism & Hospitality Awards 2014. We have reached the final all four times we have entered, winning it once. Keep your fingers crossed for us this time.  the winners will be announced at the end of October.

The final weeks of the school term saw several schools visit us, and July finished with the highest visitor numbers for several years.  We also had another full day with a photo shoot for a lingerie company to launch their new range. Now the summer holidays have started we are open Tuesdays and Thursdays with a diesel train running and Wednesdays and Sundays with steam train rides so quite a busy time for us.

Today we had Mark Wesley Productions on site making a training film for London Overground Railway.  The film stars Shaun Williamson and Richard Tate both seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves.  The whole crew were a great bunch and it was great to see them in action - very entertaining.  They will certainly be welcome back anytime.

The 24th June saw the arrival of the Colne Valley Railways latest acquisition, WD200 from the Kent & East Sussex Railway. An 0-6-0ST this is from the same batch as our WD190, and they used to work together at Shoeburyness Military Railway.  WD200 stayed there until 1970, when a group from the K&ESR purchased it.  It saw regular service there until 2012 and now needs an overhaul to get her back on track. Having recently finished WD190, our Engineering team - the Eccentrics - should be able to get this one working in no time!!

June has been a hectic month.  We've had several schools visit us, a film crew arrived at short notice to do some filming for a new BBC programme, I've been asked not to publish photos though until the programme airs in September. We then had two weekends of A Day Out With Thomas The weather was a bit damp the first Saturday but that didn't stop visitors coming to see Thomas, Daisy, Mavis, Trevor and of course, Sir Topham Hatt who made sure everyone behaved.  New for this year was a 7 1/4" Toby who looked very cute. The four days were a great success, and seeing the faces of some of the children as they saw Thomas made it all worthwhile