British railroad preservation is not everybodies cup of tea. But I find this project at the Ditcot Railway Centre that preserves the Great western Railway to be very interesting.

In the UK the electric Interurbans that we had in the US did not exist. They simply had steam powered branch lines all over the place. The equipment operated on them by the Great Western was called the Railmotor: a vertical boilered steam locomotive placed inside the wooden coach. Sometimes they pulled an additional trailer. The machines are totally extinct; so the Society decided to build a steam engine and boiler with power truck (bogie in the UK) from scratch.

The GWR Society had preserved two of the wooden coaches some years ago They have recently got a Heritage Lottery grant to restore the wooden parts.

The project web site is www.railmotor93.org The latest news section is full of photos as well as the usual funding request. It looks like they will have the Railmotor in steam in 2010.

They recently sent a crew to Switzerland to train on a similar car there in preperation for running their own Railmotor.

My hat is off to them!

Ted Miles