Thompson Park Miniature Railway, Burnley, Lancashire, UK.

February 2025 newsletter.

Narrative by Bret Harrison, Track Maintenance Dept,

   The months go by so quickly, too quickly sometimes and here I go again with the regular update on what has been happening on our popular little railway, A little railway it is but we are never short of maintenance to carry out and enhancing projects to forward which hopefully make our railway better.

   This month we are mindful of our opening date for the season to come on March 22nd this month, a little sooner than normal but it is a late Easter this year. so we have to be careful of fitting projects in which will not compromise the railway on opening day by us not being able to complete them on time so we are full on with getting the Railway ready for the start-up.

We did have an attempt at opening the railway for running on 3 days in the recent half term school holidays but generally speaking the weather did let us down. The first day of running was on Sunday Feb.16th and this day was sort of OK weatherwise but the following Wednesday the 19th and Sunday the23rd we had some appalling weather with heavy rain and winds and these days were just ruined, we did in fact on the strength of the weather forecast cancel running on Sunday the 23rd prior to the event and in fact most of us did not even attend the Railway at all, having a day off instead. Never mind, we did shake the railway down after its winter slumber and a few cobwebs were knocked off.

Prior to the attempted running days we did run the Heath Robinson mobile blower (see last months newsletter) around the track 3 times and it did do a good job generally but one or two further mods were required !!! 

Work has continued on GP 40 no.6649.and the bogies have been removed, cleaned and rebuilt and these and the engine unit have been refitted to the chassis, Some wiring and the controls need fitting yet and one or two other modifications which will become apparent soon. We are very much looking forward to getting this locomotive back into service soon. I enclose a picture of the removed bogie frames in our workshop prior to rebuilding

On the locomotive front our other GP 40 no. 6602 requires some minor attention and Sergeant. Murphy our 6 coupled jack shaft driven petrol locomotive suffered from a split brake pipe which has been attended to. Our steam locomotives are ready to go, When Sarah is de-winterised we will have a full complement of steam engines.

The sign we are in the process of making directing people from the carpark to the station has taken a bit of a relapse recently but is now painted and awaiting the letters applying. When these are applied the sign can be finished and then the mounting arrangement can be built.

Our coaching fleet are at various stages of preparation but all will be ready for the opening day. Some of the coaches have had a full repaint and look very smart.

We in the past have had trouble with the station approach signals and work is ongoing to make them more reliable and easier to see. One of our members has designed a matrix of LEDS on a fairly large board to indicate to the driver which platform has been selected for entry. This matrix is very bright and will shortly be followed by LED colour light signals which will be bigger and far brighter than the existing ones again making them much easier to see especially when that strange object we sometimes get in the sky is shining which can make them difficult to see.  Hopefully I will be able to show pictures of the progress on this work next month.

There is a shortage of pictures for me to include this month due to the nature of the work we have been doing to get the railway ready to run so for a bit of nostalgia and hopefully to brighten things up I have posted a selection of pictures of our gardens in full bloom last summer to remind us of the blazing summer we are about to enjoy this summer, well, there is nothing to stop us dreaming !!!!  

     The gardens this year will be in their second summer and so we hope that they will have matured even more this year. The garden in the apex of the tracks when these pictures were taken was barely a month old so we are hoping to see this one in particular maturing this year if the rabbits, squirrels and magpies would stop raiding it.

     My wife is the railway gardener but she is somewhat out of commission at the moment after some major surgery so I may have to fill the breach for a while in the interim of her recovering, gardening to be honest is not exactly my strong point, I am just the go-fer but I will have to do my best under instruction. In the meantime please enjoy the Spring flowers just blooming around the Park, a welcome sight indeed.