Thompson Park Miniature Railway, Burnley, Lancashire UK.

December 2024 Newsletter.

Narrative by Bret Harrison Track Maintenance Dept

Pictures by various members.

       Welcome to our early edition of the December newsletter, I am able to do this month early as we are now on Christmas and New Year holidays.

      December is dominated by our Santa trains event and this year it fell on Dec.7/8. as usual a lot of planning and organisation went into the event but this year we unfortunately dropped on the same date as storm Darragh I think it was which arrived to almost ruin our event on the Saturday. We were watching the weather closely and decided that we would make a final decision on the Saturday morning, we were about to cancel the event but there was a slight lull in the weather, and we decided to carry on with our advertised running times of 2 hours noon till 14.00 hrs… The weather during the 2 hour running session that we operated was awful, but we soldiered on and did manage to provide a Santa experience for the hardy souls who did turn up.

      Sunday was totally different, a decent day and people turned up in droves and we all enjoyed the event as we had hoped. A visiting steam engine was here on the Sunday, and this enabled us to run double headed steam on one train. With the visitor and Red Dragon. Thanks to the guys who brought the locomotive. Sarah, one of our home based steam engines was also running and a 3rd train was hauled by Sgt. Murphy.

      Sunday helped to salvage the event, but I am sure we brought a lot of joy to all who rode our trains on both days. All the members who did attend did a superb job on the day but a special thanks must go to Santa and Mrs Santa. who had agreed to fly out to us a little earlier than normal. No doubt the reindeer had a good workout before the big day.

     A major civil engineering job has been almost completed in December. I did allude to the rebuild of the trap point which protects the main Line from a runaway from the shed area by derailing anything that had decided to infiltrate the main line. We decided to improve this situation by converting the existing trap point into a full normal turnout and laying a runoff so that we would not be recovering a runaway from the earth but one still on rails on a runoff. The turnout is spring loaded biased to then runoff which is its normal position but a train entering the loop running into the sheds for disposal will still switch the rails with its wheels as it approaches from the facing side. We have cut a new trackbed from the turnout to a new 60 ‘ runoff/siding, the track has been laid but now needs final sorting out. A buffer stop will be fitted to the end.

       Special credit for this turnout build goes to Mickauley, one of our 18 year olds who built it. It was the first time he had attempted such a complicated build, and it did stretch him but he for sure learnt a lot and deserves a lot of praise. Well done!

       The annual purge of tidying and clearing out much junk and rubbish from our sheds is taking place and no doubt while this will strike terror into some members (no names no packdrill) who will not be able to find anything the sheds will at last have some order about them (for how long?)

      A shorter than normal newsletter as we have been very busy with the items mentioned and we are of course on Christmas holidays now after a very busy year on quite a lot of fronts.

   We hope to see plenty of passengers riding our trains next year when it will be 25 years since we commenced building the railway, a notable occasion which we will be celebrating.

     2025 marks 200 years since the World’s first passenger Railway, the line from Stockton to Darlington was built and like probably all the Railways in the Country we will be marking this occasion also and finally. in September 2025 we have been asked by the national 7.25″ Gauge Railway Society to host their Annual General Meeting which means that over the weekend of Sep 12 -14 2025 we will have a huge number of visiting locomotives hauling trains on our Railway, an event not to be missed. So, a lot to look forward to next year.

     All I have to do now is wish all our readers and passengers a lovely Christmas and New Year.