Thompson Park Miniature Railway, Burnley, Lancashire, UK

May 2025 Newsletter,

Narrative by Bret Harrison, Track maintenance Dept.

We seem to have had quite a few things going on this month so I will not have enough room for the promised fleet description, did I hear a sigh of relief then???

We were greeted one morning by the sight of two massive tree branches snapped off by the high winds and no doubt due to the dry conditions we were experiencing, and which had dropped dangerously onto our track. This was by the start of the Beech Garden curve. The Parks Dept. had organised tree fellers (not sure if there were three) to cut the offending branches off thus making the Railway safe. They did clear up as best they could after the work no doubt, but we did find that quite a lot of ballast had shifted and been disturbed but thankfully there was no damage to the track. A couple of trips with our trusty ballast wagon on the Works train and a bit of shovelling replenished the ballast.

For some time, we have been aware of the concrete surrounding the turntable steadily breaking up. This concrete holds the various tracks which come off the turntable. We cleared up the broken bits, but this concrete will have to be broken up, removed and replaced. Clearly this will be a winter job when the Railway is closed as we won’t be able to operate as normal, particularly when we will be hosting the National 7.25″ AGM in September when lots of locomotives will be visiting the Railway.

We have built an addition to our Works Train which trundles along behind it. Peter one of the P way crew specialises in fitting new fastening screws to the sleepers. We refit screws in the sections of tracks which are due for rehab.as a matter of course and the Flying Chair as we call it was built to Peter’s specifications from a used bogie with the sophisticated design of a section of plywood fitted on top and the top of an old chair for the pilot ( Peter), He trundles along propelling himself and fitting fastening screws. He is fast! sometimes he can appear like a blur as he passes.

May marks the annual ceremony called Memories on the Lake hosted by Pendleside Hospice where people float candles on the park Lake in memory of their lost loved ones. I think most families in the Town have been touched at some point or other by the Hospice and the event is immensely popular and provides much needed funds for the Hospice. It is a celebration and a sad occasion, and we are pleased to play our part. We open the Railway in the evening from 6pm till 8 pm, when the memorial service starts and all fares taken are donated to the Hospice. In addition, we add a sizeable donation from our own funds. We are always ready to help, the Hospice when we can.

I have to say that one of our sheds where we store larger equipment seems to be in a perpetual untidy state and we decided to blitz it and clear it out, so we had a skip delivered and filled the skip with no problem. Inside the shed was our old petrol powered dumper truck, regular readers may recall we replaced this dumper with an electric version a few months ago. Anyway, we advertised it for sale, and it was sold very quickly. The new owner has plans to turn it into a 4 wheel machine utilising a quad bike front end.

On one of our regular track checks we in the P way discovered that one of our key turnouts was suffering from a couple of timbers across it in poor condition. With deeper checks we found that all the other timbers would benefit from replacement, so we prepared the new timbers, cutting them to size prior to refitting and set about the work later on a Wednesday when we do not run the Railway. The simplest method was to remove the turnout, place it on wooden formers and refit the timbers this way. The old ballast was dug out and new ballast dropped in and wacked down to firm the base up with our petrol wacker and then refit the turnout with new fishplates as is our normal practice. The whole operation was carried out in the day.

Along with the Parks Dept a new water main has been dug by contractors and fitted, the object being to provide us with a new water supply which was lower pressure before than was required. We still have some pipework around the railway to do to fit larger pipes to give us a good water supply to all the sections that need it, ie. the loco prep. area, the station, the workshop and the clubhouse.

The large garden which we built behind the Welcome sign was giving our resident railway gardener, ie. my lovely wife Beryl trouble in terms of lack of access for her to deal with the encroaching vegetation from the hillside behind and so one of our P Way gang John took action and with the help of Lewis one of our young steam drivers a pathway was dug out of the undergrowth, a weed liner laid and a ballast base barrowed in. The effect was stunning particularly when we strimmed the hillside behind to help with the vegetation check and she is so grateful so thanks for doing that guys.

Take Care, enjoy the sunshine (sometimes) and don’t forget to sign up as a volunteer on our little happy railway