The Ashover Light Railway

This is another thread prompted by reading old copies of "The Railway Magazine" from 1950. The September 1950 magazine carried a short article about the Ashover Light Railway which had finally closed over the majority of its length to freight traffic in March 1950.

The post below is the first of two.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2019/01/15/the-ashover-light-railway-part-1

I hope you enjoy it. Much of the information comes from three sources ... The Railway Magazine, Wikipedia, and the website of the Ashover Light Railway Society. The Society's website is well worth a visit.

http://www.alrs.org.uk

 

Thank you, interesting article but one niggle. The Col Stephens Society was formed in 1985 but the caption to one of the photos claims to show a society tour!

 

Thanks for pointing this out. I will check this.

 

I have checked the source of the picture. It comes from the Colonel Stephens Society Website. The link is as in the blog post:

http://colonelstephenssociety.co.uk/the colonels railways/ashover light railway/ashover light railway members weekend/ashover light railway members weekend route.html

There is no indication of the original source and google is not of much help. I seem to have jumped to conclusions! Does anyone know what tour the picture relates to? The crossing is definitely that close to Stretton and the loco is Joan. The coping stone to the right of the image is still in place alongside the road.

I'll need to explore the records of other societies. ... I will adjust the text to reflect the fact that this cannot have been a CSS Tour.

 

I think this is the Birmingham Locomotive Club's trip on 24/08/1948. There is a colour picture in Michael Whitehouse's new album and the stains on the front of the smokebox are identical.

 

Thank you RLinkinS. I will add this to the notes at the bottom of the post.

 

Which new album is this? Sounds interesting.

 

Narrow Gauge Album , 1950 - 1965 in Colour by Michael Whitehouse. Published by Lightmoor Press. I have yet to read it but dipping in to it there are some really interesting pictures from England, Wales and Ireland. If you have read On the Narrow Gauge by P B Whitehouse then some of the pictures are of events described in that book.

 

Thanks, I'll look out for it.

 

This is the second post in a short series about the Ashover Light Railway. It covers the length of the line from the Clay Cross Works to Stretton Halt. ...

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2019/01/19/the-ashover-light-railway-part-2

 

Just ordered it, thanks for the heads up, have the PB Whitehouse book cost me 35 shillings a long time ago! Be interesting to link the events!

 

And finally ...........

This is the third of three planned posts about the Ashover Light Railway. I hope you enjoy the final installment. ....

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2019/01/19/the-ashover-light-railway-part-3

 

Thank you for posting .

Well appreciated.

Quality.

 

From the Narrow Gauge World magazine looked like the Ashover Light Railway society had decided to not progress laying track on the origanal route due to access and safety issues and lay track at Peak Rail where there have been some updates in the Peak Rail discussion thread.
But on the website they posted
"Regular followers will have noticed there has been a recent absence of news and photographs….. this is deliberate as we have some very exciting news (and photos) to share, and want to share it with our supporters before the general public.
This is an unashamed plug for the society’s AGM on May 11th."

Now a week later and still no public update?. Any news or did the AGM not approve it?

 

Sound interesting but I have no knowledge. Sorry.

Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

 

Still no update from the society, but someone has posted a video of testing new track with the 1926 battery-electric locomotive ‘Spondon’ at Peak Rail. It could be said that this does not relate to the history of the Ashover railway, but like the "Lynbarn" for the L and B a start.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=2456921097661639

 

An update
"Peak Rail Steam and Diesel Gala on August 10th & 11th. We will have our Rowsley site open, and hopefully be running as well."
Presumably all the Derbyshire Dales NR kit at Rowsley has been sold.

 

The news was discussed at the AGM and a decision reached but a bit of background work needs to be done before any announcement can be made. If you would like to know you could always join up as a member

 

So has it been decided to abandon any attempt at laying track on the original route? Or is it still a future aim.

 

Long time no news on here. I see from their website (http://www.alrs.org.uk/site/) that track laying was progressing at Rowsley in March 2023, but no more recent news. However, further down the News page there are undated pictures of trains running.
Can anyone shed any light on their status, are they open and running or not?