Isle Of Man Steam Railway

Appears the mixed goods is working the diagram as above. Just asked at Douglas.

 

Where does one find 3 foot gauge engineering vehicles? Are they specially built or converted from metre gauge (of which there is much more around the world)?

 

The goods at Castletown this lunchtime

 

Some footage of the Railway's 150th Anniversary celebrations this week, including the boat trains, evening double-header and goods train.

 

Does anybody have details of the IMR timetable for tomorrow? They were giving out copies at Port Erin on Sunday, stupidly I didn't take one

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Am I correct in thinking, there is a 8.30pm train from Douglas tomorrow night after the event, i'm sure I read something but now can't find it anywhere

 

Yes, and here's tomorrow's t/t https://www.iombusandrail.im/media/2838/imr-30th-july.jpg
Cheers,
Ray

 

Thanks for this Ray, I'll be taking the 8.30pm train to Colby so I get to go on the train

 

Many thanks Ray! Sadly I won't be able to stay for the evening extravaganza, but I had wondered whether I might be able to catch a steam train to the airport. Sadly the timings don't quite work, but ah well...hopefully I can squeeze in a brief visit to Groudle in the morning, so I will get one last steam fix before I leave the island!

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Mixture of original stock ie specially built plus a few conversions.

Special purpose kit tends to be built to order. Locos are easier to re-gauge than tampers. for example.
Having said that, the Festy had a tamper converted down to 2ft {known as the Stefcomatic, IIRC} ...
The flat & ballast waggons [runners] are built on the bogie chassis from under scrapped "pairs" coaches ...

 

The Stefcomatic is a converted Standard Gauge 1956 Matisa tamper - another from the same batch is in the NRM collection, but the FR has a bit of a thing for regauged tampers! The 1st usable tamper for the WHR project was built as metre gauge, regauged to standard gauge for the DLR and Jubilee Line, then re-regauged to 2', a Matisa A05, and the current FfWHR tamper is a Framafer (Plasser & Theurer) KMX95 that started out as Metre Gauge. It even borrowed the Talyllyn's 2'3" gauge tamper for a bit after a spot of light regauging (that was subsequently reversed)

John

 

Hope everyone who came along enjoyed the show. Looking at next year now and a way to celebrate 150 years of the Port Erin line
With assisting delivering the events I didn’t get chance to take many photos but head over to @hrviom on Facebook and there are plenty on show

 

Just a word of thanks to everyone who worked so hard to put on a great show. It was my first visit to the island and together with my wife and daughter we had a thoroughly enjoyable week. They are all remarkable systems which clearly have a band of very dedicated and skilled people looking after them. The scale and extent of the railways blew me away, as did the condition of the magnificent vehicles we travelled behind and in.
I hope common sense prevails and ministers realise what precious and unique infrastructure they have on the island. Looking at how busy everywhere was, hopefully the spreadsheet will be looking favourable for those that count such things, but the value should run much further than that.
We wouldn't have visited had it not been for the transport festival, however what we discovered beyond the festival was a welcoming and beautiful island that went far beyond our expectations. Thank you for a wonderful week.
We will be back at some point, but the finances need to recover first!

 

Despite some disappointing failures, the friendliness of the staff, volunteers and visitors (I noted many from across Europe) made this an event to remember across all the islands remarkable railway systems. My third visit, and the best to date. I agree...a big thanks to those who worked hard to make it possible.

And thanks to one of the volunteers who spontaneously offered this stranger a lift to chase Thursdays dining train in his car!

A flavour of the week...

 

Video from across the transport festival, with footage from the Port Erin welcome event, double headed and banked trains, photo charters, service trains, Fenella in Peel and Caledonia at Knockaooe and the Steam Extravaganza at Douglas.

 

Some great photos and video thanks
All four of my radio programmes about the Steam Railway (excluding the Port Erin line, that’ll be next year) are now available to listen online at
https://www.manxradio.com/podcasts/isle-of-man-heritage-railways-a-celebration/

 

Thank you for making these Mike, it's been a lovely little series to listen to over the past few weeks!

 

What a brilliant record of the week, thanks for sharing!

 

Now that the IMR 150 celebrations are over and things have returned to normal a couple of after hours stock workings have taken place. On Tuesday loco Nos. 5 & 6 were towed South, No.6 Peveril being dropped off at Port St.Mary goods shed and No.5 Mona towed through to Port Erin. On Wednesday the 'M' & 'H' wagons which had been in Douglas for a couple events were brought out and temporarily put in Port Erin carriage shed. No.5 is now on display in the museum with the 'Royal' saloon and will be joined by the 2 wagons shortly. No.6 will receive some attention in PSM goods shed by the same small team that did No.5. A few missing bits need to be sourced and then attention will be turned to cleaning/painting the wheels and running gear on the fireman's side which was inaccessible when the rest of the loco was painted last? year. Locos 4,11 & 13 were all in service yesterday and today for timetable S. MNR No.4 Caledonia is awaiting a couple of new springs.
Ray.