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East Shropshire is well known as the ‘cradle of the Industrial Revolution’ with iron works, coal mines and furnaces all well established by 1760. Oakengates is a small town situated in the former Shropshire industrial area, and is roughly midway between Shrewsbury and Wolverhampton, which has now been subsumed into the new town of Telford. Prior to absorption into Telford, the town had a population of around 11,500, which made it the third largest settlement in the county after Shrewsbury and Wellington.

The town found itself at the centre of a network of railways which included a LNWR main line, a GWR mainline, a LNWR branch line, two GWR branch lines and the private railway network of the Lilleshall Company.

The linked article focuses on the lines running through the heart of Oakengates.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/01/31/the...akengates/

Significant elements of this article depend on an article by David Bradshaw & Stanley C. Jenkins; Rails around Oakengates; in Steam Days, March 2013. Their work is used here with the kind permission of David Bradshaw who is a native of Oakengates. In addition, I have gathered together everything that I have found which relates directly to the railways which passed through Oakengates. In March 2024, I gave a talk to the Oakengates History Group which was culled from what is included in this article.

Before World War 1, Mallet locomotives were seen as being the best motive power on the metre-gauge/950mm-gauge lines in East Africa. ......

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/03/24/mal...st-africa/

Towards the end of March 2024, I stumbled across a number of journals of the New Zealand Model Railway Guild. One of these, the March 2021 edition, included a pictorial article about J1211 North British 4-8-2 Locomotive No. 24534 of 1939.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/03/26/the...e-network/

40 No. 4-8-2 locomotives which were built in 1939 by the North British Locomotive Company and became the New Zealand Railways (NZR) J class.

Looking through a number of 1964 Model Railway News magazines, I came across drawings of Sharp, Stewart & Co. 2-4-0, built in 1870 for the Furness Railway Co. and numbered 58 on their roster.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/03/29/fur...ive-no-58/

Originally conceived as a mineral railway, the Furness Railway later played a major role in the development of the town of Barrow-in-Furness, and in the development of the Lake District Tourist industry. It was formed in 1846 and survived as an independent, viable concern until the Grouping of 1923.

This is another of the locomotive drawings carried in 1964 by the Model Railway News magazine. ...

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/03/29/gre...ve-no-551/

The Great Northern Railway recognised the value of 'mixed traffic' locomotives in the 19th century. Lindsay says that seventy five locos of this class were built. One source says that a total of 117 Class 18 locos were built. The Great Northern Railway Society says that 153 were built. The different sources seem to agree that fifty of the class were out-sourced from locomotive builders, the remainder were built in-house at the Great Northern's Doncaster works

In April/May 2024 we spent time in Co. Donegal again. Our intention was to walk as much as possible of the Londonderry & Lough Swilly trackbed as we could between Letterkenny and Derry and the branch to Cardonagh.

We were frustrated by contacting COVID at the very beginning of our holiday and recovery was slow!

Walking any distance at all was impossible for both of us.

I was, however, able to start work on the first of these articles about these lines.

This is the first article: ...

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/05/16/the...ry-part-1/

A further article in an ongoing series about the L&LSR in Co. Donegal. ...

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/05/27/the...ry-part-2/

Sitting in a display case in our lounge is a model made by my late father-in-law in O-Gauge of a Midland railway Railmotor from the early 20th century. David painted the model in LMS livery. Its presence in our lounge has been an encouragement to find out more about steam powered railcars.

The linked article is the first of at least 6 articles about steam railcars.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/06/11/ste...y-example/

This second article about Steam Railcars focusses on two early proponents of the units ...Dugald Drummond and Harry Wainwright. .....

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/06/15/ste...ight-secr/

A third article about UK Steam Railcars/Railmotors. This article focusses on the Great Western Railway. ....

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/06/17/ste...ilway-gwr/