Thompson Park Miniature Railway, Burnley, Lancashire UK.

September 2025 Newsletter

Welcome to our latest newsletter, September marks the end of our normal running season however the Friends of Thompson Park have asked us to support a Halloween event they are having on Wednesday Oct.29th by running scary trains which we are pleased to be able to do. Who said our members are scary enough!!!

Then our last event of the year will be Santa trains running on Dec.6th and 7th and no doubt a certain Mr. Claus will be visiting with presents for the children, so a visit is highly recommended.

So to recent events and we were pleased to host the AGM of the national 7.25″ Society on September 13/14 when many locomotives visited for the weekend.as the members gathered for their AGM., Trains were running all weekend hauled by all manner of locomotives. It was a successful weekend for all concerned and the members of both the 7.25 society and our own members deserve much credit for the weekend’s organisation. It was 7 years ago that we last hosted the event.

The last weekend of September marks our Charity weekend when all our fares are donated to a chosen local charity. This year our chosen charity was the Hub in Padiham which dedicates itself to combating loneliness and mental health issues. We were able to make a sizeable donation to their funds for which they were incredibly grateful. A big thank you to all who rode our trains on the weekend. You did an excellent job for a worthy cause.

We were able to run the charity event over the full length of our mainline despite what could have been a catastrophe in the days before the event when a heavy contractor’s earth moving plant managed to reverse over our track and severely damage it. The rails were crippled and the track depressed into the ground. We had no choice but to remove the rails which were beyond saving and fit new rails and sleepers where needed. The geometry of the track was recovered and the alignment and height of the track re-established. It took approximately 3 quarters of a tonne of ballast to affect the repair. We finished the work about 2pm on the previous Sunday to the charity weekend and were able to hand the track back for operation over the full line on that Sunday afternoon.  For that weekends running we had been able only to use the inner loop of our track plan using this loop twice in each trip to simulate the normal distance travelled. We thank our passengers for their understanding of our situation.as we tried to make the best of things.

We are now in Autumn/Winter mode as we carry out essential maintenance after our busy summer running programme when we have little time for maintenance only being able to carry out when we need to do to keep going.  We have a few projects in mind and one or two fundamental changes. We plan to experiment with solid recycled plastic sleepers instead of the timber ones we presently use for instance to see how they go; first indications are very favourable.

Plenty of work ahead so appearances from more of our members would be most welcome.

Bret Harrison.