Freight Driver Experience or Things that go bump in the day!

As anybody who supports or visits the railway knows we do driver experience days on a regular basis.

Well today we did something a little different we had a diesel freight driver experience using a selection of wagons and the class 14 locomotive.

It sold out and has shown to be very popular.

So here are a few images of the day.

Crossing the river bridge approaching Wansford © Thomas Woolley.
Crossing the river bridge leaving Wansford © Thomas Woolley.
Leaving Wansford © Thomas Woolley.
Crossing the river as seen from the signal box © Thomas Woolley.
Approaching the river bridge © Thomas Woolley.
Waiting to depart Wansford © Thomas Woolley.
Freight Train awaiting departure from Wansford © Thomas Woolley.
The freight train at Castor © Jon Benton.

As you can see the weather was for the most part nice and sunny.

I am sure that there will be more freight driver experience days in the future.

For those who missed it we will be running freight trains in between the main service on the 1st May with three runs of the freight train.

The wagon group have put in a lot of time and effort into getting the wagons as they are now, and I look forward to seeing more of their work in the future.

Who knows perhaps we may see the Travelling Post Office running again on the line.

The four days of Easter

Easter can be a funny time of year, it’s success or otherwise is very dependent on the weather. Many say it always seems colder on Easter weekends.

Anyway, this year was different, we had four nice days weather wise and on all four days 92 Squadron provided hauling of all services.

92 Squadron at Wansford station. © Chris Walker

It does no harm to be running a large locomotive on busy weekends. 92 Squadron did us proud. All services were almost to or on time.

For me personally it seemed quite strange not to be at a station, but circumstances dictate otherwise. So as with other running days we manned the Webcam and chat and we were busy there instead with people after anything from a chat to specific information.

The trains were busy and the visitors happy judging from the feedback we got on the cam. Nice to see smiling faces as the train passes.

Credit must be given to all the working members who were working over the weekend, the railway was shown at it’s best.

I could of course post some pictures of previous Easter holidays complete with a mixture of the following, rain, sleet or snow but that would not be fair. We had a super weekend on the railway and hopefully it will be the first of many in the future.

A Jubilee for a Queens Jubilee

The Railway is pleased to announce after a great deal of work that Jubilee No 45596 Bahamas will be visiting the NVR from the 4th to the 10th of June.

The locomotive during this time will work a Jubilee Special service on Sunday 5th June as part of the NVR Jubilee event, the locomotive will undertake main line running while at the NVR

The Wansford Box again

Some time ago I put some excellent pictures of the Wansford Box on the blog. Since then I have had requests for more pictures of the internal area.
So here they all are © Matthew Alden Farrow and my thanks to him for the images.

The local diagram for the box.
The view to the East towards Peterborough.
Another closer view towards the East across the River Nene.
The length of the box looking West towards the station.
The length of the box and the frame looking East over the river
Matt at work
The wheel that’s turned to open and close the crossing gates
Matt at work again, this will give some idea of the size of the wheel

We hope to bring more pictures around Wansford and the other stations very shortly.

Engines large and small.

Saturday 26th March was a day of not only our Mothering Sunday cream tea service, but also a day of engines large and small

Let’s start with the large, here is the Polish tank engine about to leave Wansford with the cream tea service to Peterborough Nene Valley.

© Matthew Alden Farrow

Now we have a mixture of large and small as the Peak 45041 stands at platform two prior to departure and a parade of small steam engines pass over the level crossing

Now a selection of pictures of the small steam engines which proved very popular.

Super weather for a super day.
My thanks to Matt for the excellent images.

The station cottages

Now anybody who has visited Wansford station will have seen the station cottages next door.

But people who have only seen Wansford either via pictures in a magazine or on the net, or via the Wansford webcams may not know what they are.

We are often asked on the cam what they are when they are mentioned during chat. They are outside the view of the webcam.

So here is a picture of the station cottages on a nice sunny spring Saturday.

© Matthew Alden-Farrow

They are typical railway cottages of the era and the area. Many people comment as to how they would like to live in one and have the trains on their doorstep.

My thanks to Matt for the picture.