FROM THE RAILWAY MAGAZINE ARCHIVES
Battlefield tours via
Zebrugge ferry
THE Lancashire &Yorkshire and North Eastern Railways have reinstated the service to Belgium via Hull and Zeebrugge, the first sailing from Hull (Riverside Quay) being on May 15, and the last for the season from Zeebrugge will be on October 5. The service will vary from two to three sailings per week in each direction. The main feature is the introduction of weekend tours to the battlefields of Belgium. Passengers are enabled to leave towns in the North of England after business hours on Saturday and be back before noon on the following Tuesday, having visited such notable places as Zeebrugge, Ostend, Dixmude and Ypres.
Longmoor lease signed
A SIX-MONTH lease from the Ministry of Defence on the 1½-mile section of the now-closed Long moor Military Railway between Liss and Liss Forest was signed by Captain Peter Manisty, Chairman of the Association of Railway Preservation Societies, on behalf of the Longmoor Trust on April 29. The line will be reformed as the Longmoor Steam Railway and Southern Transport Centre. Locomotives and rolling stock, which have been housed by the Army at Long moor are being moved to Liss, where it is planned to erect an engine shed.
Robbery coach burnt
A ROYAL MAIL coach from which the "GreatTrain Robbers" plundered more than £2½million during the ambush between Leighton Buzzard and Cheddington in August, 1963, has been broken-up and burned in the scrap yard of A King & Sons Ltd, near Norwich. The operation was watched by police and security men so that nothing would be left for souvenir hunters
Restored railway to Drax Power Station
TO serve Drax Power Station with "merry-go-round" coal trains, Eastern Region has restored a four-mile long section of the Hull & Barnsley Railway from Hensall Junction to Drax, passing through Carlton Towers Station. This section of line was closed in 1959.
Ladbroke Grove impact speed 'highest in history'
THE release of the third interim report into the Lad broke Grove train crash of October 5, which killed 31 people, reveals that the closing speed was 145mph - almost certainly the highest velocity impact in world train crash history.
The leading Class 165 carriage, which virtually disintegrated in the crash, has been reconstructed in twodimensional form to identify modes of vehicle structure failure.
Tests are being undertaken to determine the crash performance values of aluminium and steel.
Twenty Class 37s to work in Spain
ENGLISH Welsh & Scottish Railway, which already has 40 Class 37s working in France, is to send a further 20 Type 3s to Spain.
Contracts were signed between EWS and Spanish national operator Renfe in mid-April for the supply of locomotives for use on infrastructure trains working on the construction of a new high speed line in northern Spain.