Author: Eric Ring

752 as 11456 comes to the rescue on ELR ‘Legends of Steam’ event 14th March 2025

Not long before the start of the ELR event on Friday 14th March the Railway found out that one of the visiting locos, B1 class 61306, could not arrive until late in the day. As a result our loco 752 running as 11456 was at short notice steamed to take over the duties of 61306 on the ‘shuttle’ services on the 14th until 61306 arrived from the National network at Heywood in the late afternoon.

Images of 11456 in use can be found on our page Photos – stock in use
and videos from Youtube on our page (link to follow)

Expected use of our stock on Worth Valley in 2025

At the time of initial publication (January 2025) there were no definite dates for use of our stock, this is possibly because they are organising various special events as a result of Bradford being the UK City of Culture 2025.
SEE BELOW for details of known use of our carriages in May 2025

In past years our carriages have been used in various events, the one initially with known dates with known use of our stock is –
20th to 23rd March – The Steam Gala, the Worth Valley website contains a page giving details click here
IMPORTANT UPDATE for operational reasons our carriages will now NOT be in use during the March 2025 Gala

NEW – Early May Bank Holiday weekend 3rd, 4th and 5th May will be operating Vintage Trains using our carriages as well as two other sets of carriages running with 3 vintage steam locos all weekend, full details can be found on the Worth Valley website click here (opens in new window).

There is also to be a 1940s Weekend in May 2025 which may feature our carriages but that is still to be confirmed, and there may be a further vintage event later in the year, this page will be updated as details become available.

July and August would normally feature our carriages in use on Vintage Trains Weekends but it has now been confirmed that they will not be running in 2025 as the much-travelled ‘Railway Children’ theatrical production is to take place between July and September at Oxenhope, where our carriages are normally based.

Expected use of our locos at the East Lancashire Railway in 2025

We expect that our working locomotives at the East Lancashire Railway (ELR}, Pug 19 as LMS 11243, and Saddletank 752 as LMS 11456 will be in use in events in 2025, so far we know about the following events but the extent of their use may not be known at the time of initial publication (January 2025) – but this post will be updated as information becomes available.

January 18th – Railway 200 ‘Open-House’ Day featured 11243 in ‘Taster Driver Experience’ sessions and work shuttle service between Bury and Summerseat, details were given on the ELR website, there is a further event in September, see below.

14th to 16th March – Legends of Steam, extent of use of our locos unknown at the moment, for more details see ELR website page click here
The Public Timetables have been published on the ELR website and do not feature our locos, these can be viewed on the ELR website page click here
IMPORTANT UPDATE ELR have now confirmed that our locos will not be in use in this event, only the 4 mainline locos .

24th to 25th May – Vintage Weekend, full details of loco use not yet available but there is a page on the ELR website giving event details click here

12th to 14th September – Railway 200 Celebration Weekend, full details not available but there is a page on the ELR website click here

17th to 19th October – Autumn Steam Gala, we understand that both locos will feature but full details not yet known, for the ELR website page click here

Expected use of our locos at the East Lancashire Railway in 2024

Images of our locos in use can be found on our page Photos – stock in use and videos mainly from Youtube on our page Video Online

At the first time of first writing in November 2023 it was expected there would be two major steam events in 2024 during which our two operational locos were expected to be in use on the East Lancashire Railway. 7th and 8th September 2024 – there is now an additional event as below featuring our two locos at the railway

Autumn Steam Gala 2024 – Friday 11th to Sunday 13th October, our locos were in use, along with visiting locos 9F 92134 and Furness 20, in fact Pug 19 as 11243 stood in for Furness 20 at the start of the second day.

NEW – Heritage Open Days at Bury Transport Museum – Heritage Open days are taking place at many locations between 6th and 15th September 2024, the events at the Bury Transport Museum (near Bury Bolton Street Station took take place on 7th and 8th September featuring a static display of our Saddletank loco 752 currently liveried as 51456 – for this event it was to be liveried as L&Y 752 – , the L&Y ‘Radial Tank’ 1008 on loan from the (National) Railway Museum and the bogie L&Y Directors Saloon recently acquired by the railway. Our Pug loco 19 currently liveried as 11243 was busy with shunting demonstrations in front of the museum. NOTE – 752 is now reliveried as LMS 11456 in advance of its road trip to the Severn Valley Railway on 9th September
To view the East Lancashire Railway web page giving full details click here
More details of the Heritage Open days in England can be found here

Legends of Steam – Friday March 15th to Sunday 17th March, our Saddletank 752 featured in all 3 days liveried as Horwich Works service loco 11305 as we have reported elsewhere on this website, running shuttle services each day.

Images of 752 in use can be found on our page Photos – stock in use
and videos from Youtube on our page Video Online

There may be other public events during 2024 featuring our locos of which details will be published on this web page.

Expected use of our stock on Worth Valley in 2024

NOTE – the Worth Valley will be using the Oxenhope station and Exhibition Shed area for special events from early October to the end of 2024, so we expect that our carriages and possibly Pug 51218 will not be on public display during this period, also our sales stand is unlikely to be open.

Autumn Steam Up and Fenchurch Special – new event
From Friday 4^th to Sunday 6^th October there is to be a revival of an Autumn Steam Gala, this time with a twist – on Friday evening there was a special operating with ‘Terrier’ loco FENCHURCH visiting from the Bluebell Railway, this will include two Mark 1 carriages and our Third Class six-wheel 1507,

Full details of the 3-day event can be found here –https://kwvr.co.uk/events/autumn-steam-up/
L&Y Ironclad 52044 is one of the locos that may feature in the main event services but currently there are no plans to use our carriages other than for the Fenchurch Special on Friday evening.

Images of our carriage in use can be found on our page Photos – stock in use and videos from Youtube on our page Video Online

VINTAGE TRAINS – there was a dedicated web page on the Worth Valley website which can be found via this link (opens in new window)

The trains ran for full weekends in July and August 2024 –
20th & 21st July, 27th & 28th July, 3rd & 4th August, 10th & 11th August, 17th & 18th August and our carriage operation was without trouble, although there was some impact from other operational reasons including a lineside fire which temporarily stopped all services on one day.

For operational reasons our First Class 6-wheel 279 was not be used on the services, although our Third Class 6-wheel 1507 was be in use with its three replacement doors and one repaired door fully completed.


THE STEAM GALA – Thursday March 21st to Sunday March 24th 2024, 2 of our carriages, Club Carriage 47 and Bogie Brake Third 1507 were in service train use for the 4 days on one of the main carriage sets.

Images of our carriages in use can be found on our page Photos – stock in use
and videos from Youtube on our page Video Online