Burnley & Pendle Miniature Railway Society.
May 2026 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to our newsletter for May 2026. What strange weather we are experiencing so far this year, we seem to get all seasons randomly. Some weekends we have been really busy and some weekends the Park is empty of visitors. Still, all beyond our control and so we just carry on whatever.

We cannot do much regarding the maintenance of the Railway in summer when we are running so we are normally just restricted to essential repair work and in this regard we have needed to carry out running repairs to two of our coaches and also Excalibur, our electric loco. We had to remove both bogies from the loco in order to take a link from the drive chains which had stretched, At the same time a drive sprocket was replaced as it was well worn. The drive components were then serviced and the loco is now running back to normal, as are the two coaches.

The articulated coaching set has also seen some work carried out including repairing an air brake leakage and repairing a coupling bogie. A major miss is the railcar which has a bogie removed under repair, we really could do with this electric unit back in action to provide cover for a breakdown elsewhere if necessary.

On one of our frequent track inspections it was noted that at the end of the river straight stretch a pair of rails which we had replaced after the contractors dumper incident when they severely damaged the track were wearing in a strange way with only a small portion of the profiled top section of the railhead wearing. The gauge was fine and the cross levels. We took out the rails and turned them through 180 degrees and refitted them. They are now running better ?? profiled rail-top issue?

We are now using plastic sleepers 100% as we have more or less run out of timber ones , I have kept a few lengths of timber for fitting under turnouts.

We have acquired some new vegetation kit in the shape of a battery hedge trimmer and a petrol lawn mower to combat the always there problem of vegetation starting to foul the track and possiblty being a fire hazard from our steam locomotives. We have made a 4-wheel wagon to transport the mower behind the works train around the railway to where it is needed.

This month (June) we have a raft of schools bringing their pupils to the park having taken up our offer of taking the children on a jolly around the park on the train. We are very happy to do this. It is a pleasure to see the children enjoying themselves.

We continue to have trouble with the two turnouts in the station throat. They have been plaguing us during the winter and continue to do so. We are going to have to have a big rethink about how we solve this troublesome issue.

So let’s hope for some stable weather in the rest of the summer and some good sunny enjoyable days and the 2 station turnouts working well, please.!!