Category: Souvenirs

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Sir Nigel Gresley to visit the NVR

7th to 10th and 15th to 16th April 2023

N°4498 Sir Nigel Gresley was the 100th Gresley Pacific built by the Great Northern Railway / London and North Eastern Railway. Built at Doncaster as works N°1863, the locomotive entered service in 1937 following a naming ceremony at Marylebone station on 26th November. The locomotive was mainly based at London King’s Cross, with a spell at Grantham during World War II, and was briefly re-numbered as N°7 before becoming N°60007 when the LNER was merged into British Railways. On 3rd June 1956, Sir Nigel Gresley had the honour of hauling the Royal Train from King’s Cross to York with H.M. the Queen on board. The “Stephenson Locomotive Society Special” of the 23rd May 1959 was the first train in the UK with a booked or advertised schedule of over 100 m.p.h. and during that trip, N°60007 set the official post-war speed record for steam traction of 112 mph.

Join the NVR as we celebrate steam-hauled services with 60007 back in Blue for the first time since overhaul,

We are delighted that 60007 will be a special guest throughout the event and will be hauling passenger trains during the weekend.  The locomotive is attending with thanks to Sir Nigel Locomotive Trust 

60007 Footplate Experience 

Take the chance to ride the footplate of 60007. A limited number of tickets will be on sale to ride the footplate of 60007, entering the footplate will be via the famous A4 Tender corridor, which leads from the coaching stock to the locomotive footplate, you will then ride the footplate for approximately five minutes. Tickets for the Footplate experience are limited and will be an additional payment on top of your standard travel ticket 

Mk1 Coaching stock in use
All-day Rover Tickets are available 
Four trips per day behind Sir Nigel Gresley 
Licensed Buffet Car
Turntable Café serving hot/cold food and refreshments from 8:30 
Wansford Miniature Railway 
Wansford Shop and Second-Hand Book Shop open
Ale on Rail,
Other attractions to be advised

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Here we go then……..

Tomorrow, (Saturday 26th November) sees the start of the Santa trains for 2022.

Fifty four services up to Christmas Eve mainly on the weekends. Plus three evening trains and a day just for Just Go Holidays.

As always it will be a busy time for the railway, and some of the many working members. As well as paid staff beavering away behind the scenes.

Hopefully the weather will be in our favour on the running days.

The three webcams on Railcam will give good coverage of trains at Wansford & Orton Mere, as well as one of the Wansford ones covering the station and crossing being available on YouTube complete with a chat room that’s in operation not only on running days but all others as well.

So if your a working member involved then many thanks for your commitment over this run up to the festive weekend, and most importantly have fun, because thats what it’s all about.

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Getting ready for the weekend.

Thursday to Sunday sees the Queens Platinum Jubilee, and like everywhere else we are celebrating this special occasion.
We have numerous events over the four days culminating with the locomotive Bahamas visiting us and pulling the three services on Sunday.

No doubt this will be popular, when the locomotive was with us before it generated a lot of positive interest.

So whatever you’re doing this Jubilee weekend have a great time, and if you’re visiting the railway look at all we have on offer a visit is so much more than just a train ride.

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Wansford Miniature Railway

Wansford Miniature Railway

Our Jubilee Trains will be running on Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd June from 10 to 3pm.

Rides only £1 each, our shop will also be open selling Union Jack Hand flags, a big selection of Trackside Models, OO Gauge wagons, books, DVD and much more.

Bring the kids along for a ride on a Miniature a Jubilee Train

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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.

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The Wansford Booking Office.

One place that people rarely think about except when validating or buying tickets is the booking office. Not realising that it houses a crack squad trained to extract money with the least amount of pain.

Here are a few pictures of the booking office.

The Booking Hall.
Where you part with your money.
The nerve centre.
You too can have one of these for a couple of pounds!

So there you have it, the hub of the station on running days.

All images are © Kim Shaw.

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Ready Steady GO!!!!!!!!

Tomorrow sees the recommencement of services on the NVR, hopefully with no more lockdowns ahead.

Services will still be far from what we are used to, we still have social distancing.

Looking at the official railway web site we have lots of special events coming up, please support them. This is still a critical time for the railway.

For those who do visit and travel, you are most welcome, thanks for your support it is appreciated.

The railway has played a very important part in Peterborough’s history and development and it’s fair to say the city would be very different if that first train had not steamed into the city in 1845.

Whilst we can’t fully recreate those days, travelling on the railway does give you the opportunity to travel on part of the first railway route into the city.

If you take some nice photographs during your visit and would like to share them please feel free to send them to me and I would love to include them on the blog. The email address can be found to the right of this posting.

Welcome back to The Nene Valley Railway.

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Advertisements and tickets

Many tickets these days seem to have adverts on the back for a variety of things from half price burgers to free cinema tickets.

Well back in the day railway tickets also had advertisements , however these were in the form of slip in adverts into pockets in the ticket.

Here are a couple of examples, I do wonder how successful they were.

Would they have encouraged you to purchase anything?

Would you buy a ticket from Nassington and be tempted to buy China tea?