Thompson Park Miniature Railway Burnley, Lancashire UK

June 2025 Newsletter

Narrative by Bret Harrison, Track Maintenance Dept.

Hello, and welcome to our monthly newsletter where we record our principal activities over the past month. At the beginning of the month it was our quarter century of operating our little Railway in Burnley and we decided that by way of marking the event we would charge 25 year old prices for the Sunday running session however the weather let us down big style with heavy rain and just a few hardy souls turned up to help us celebrate our birthday so it was a complete washout unfortunately.

Also celebrating was the fact that it was 90 years at the end of May since the last tram ran in Burnley and so we remembered this occasion by getting out into service on a rare run out on our accessible coach our own Burnley Corporation tram. It took pride of place on the day. I should have recorded this last month so apologies for that.

Much of the P way activity this month has centred in the station area where we have spent most of our time. The Parks Department had had a new water supply installed in the vicinity of our railway as I alluded to last month to correct a low pressure issue which was causing us some problems. The water supply in the station was still slow and investigation revealed that a manhole in the station contained the pipework for the supply and the problem was that a large pipe had been connected to a smaller pipe to the outlet and this was causing the slow flow. The remedy was to replace this pipe with a larger one and so we set about this task.

As the pipe was underground, we had to remove a panel of track in platform 3 to dig a trench for our new pipe to go. This was carried out and the new pipe fitted which terminates in a new housing we built which will serve platforms 2 and 3 where our steam engines are serviced. The trench was backfilled up to a point where we could provide a new track ballast base and after replacing all the sleepers on the removed track panel this was replaced and reconnected with new fishplates. It was packed and levelled and backfilled with new ballast. We do have the new tap fittings still to fit but we need to fit a locking door and roof to the tap housing before we connect the new supply for security reasons.

We will also be fitting a new water supply at the turntable in due course.

Another long term problem we have been experiencing on P Way is that when the steam engines stop typically in road 2 in the station the drivers clean the fire and rake out the ash from the fire grate onto the track, not surprisingly this burns the sleepers and so we decided to correct this issue  by providing them with a pit between the rails for the ash to go in. We needed a straight piece of track for this and the area where they stop was on a curve, so we had to move a passenger walkway back a few feet and this gave enough room for the pit in road 2. Next again a panel of track was removed and a pit dug in the earth. This was lined out with block and steel liner and the track panel replaced after fitting with new sleepers except of course where the pit was. The rails run on top of the block in this area. A steel removable tray has been fabricated and simply drops into the pit and is removable for emptying. The drivers now need to stop in the right place!!!!  or strong words from the P Way will ensue!!!!

An addition to this is that we removed all the burnt sleepers in the previous location and cleaned out all the mucky ballast and replaced with new sleepers and ballast.  Whilst in this vicinity we replaced the worn out sleepers in the bay platform where we load the accessible coach.

During the month we had a visit from Pendle Community High School and College, a special education school based in Nelson who had requested a visit for their disabled contingent and we were happy to oblige. Much use was made of our accessible coach, and they had a great visit.

How certain er! people behave. On a track inspection in our works train we encountered a large rotten log placed on our track in the woods. It was heavy and had taken considerable effort to be placed there and we had to expend considerable effort in removing it and rolling it out of the way. If it had been placed there to derail a train that was never going to happen as it was easy to spot. What a pity these people cannot spend their effort and time in doing useful things.

Running wise in the month has been very much stop and start with the changeable weather, some days we have been very busy and some days not so. In fact, we did not run at all on one Saturday

I think that covers it for the month’