Epping Ongar Railway

Just a quick update photo taken earlier today showing the tracks extending towards North Weald station. From the left is the main line, the loop, siding road 2 and siding road 1.

Track laying continues at North Weald

The main and loop are being re-laid through the station, and then will connect up with the existing track crossing Kiln Road (and which runs on to Epping). This will form a “loop” / two tracks at North Weald, which will be signalled for bi-directional working (trains can arrive in either platform, in either direction).

The railway is progressing towards the re-opening, and the more people helping, the sooner trains can run… visit How You Can Help page for more info on how to get involved with our friendly team as we enable steam and diesel to operate.

EOR were pleased to have been invited, and attend the Loughton Festival on Saturday (24th). This was held at St. Mary’s Church and Bob Gillman (one of our Volunteer Liaison officers) reports… “As the weather was so fine it was decided to hold the event on the front lawn, which gave access to a lot of people passing by along the High Street. Quite a number of leaflets and membership forms were given out after much friendly interest and conversation. Fellow volunteer Dave Regan also helped man the stand and we took a number of enquiries from a wide variety of ages, interested in all manner of volunteering opportunities on the railway”. 

The festival was also attended by Volunteer Action Epping Forest, the railway being a member of this voluntary groups signposting service:

Dave Regan and Christine Eyles of 'Voluntary Action Epping Forest'

Over the coming few days you may spot a few updates to the website as we give it a Spring Clean!

We have recently overhauled the “How You Can Help” page, showing how the railway operates and further details about the wide range of rewarding and interesting volunteering opportunities there are at Epping-Ongar.

Simon Hanney, General Manager, EOR

We are pleased to announce that the new unloading pad has received its first item with the delivery of a BR 20t Brake Van on 31^st March. This vehicle will be used as one of the EOR engineering fleet, and may also be used in the future for demonstration goods trains and “Brake Van rides”.

The goods Brake Van is on loan from the London Transport Museum, who kindly arranged its movement from Neasdon depot to EOR. As with all our heritage fleet, EOR will be taking good care of this vehicle and undertaking minor restoration repairs to quickly return this into use - to be part of the engineering trains as we ready the line for reopening.

EOR would like to take this opportunity to thank London Transport Museum for kindly loaning this vehicle and we look forward to working closely with the Museum as we preserve and restore our transport heritage.

 EOR’s new concrete unloading pad has been specially designed so that flat-bed vehicles can load / unload in both directions, and so not only enable safe and efficient delivery operations, but (in the absence of a turntable) also enable us to be able to “turn” locos.

Simon Hanney
General Manager, Epping-Ongar Railway

Railway Switchboard: 01277 365200   

http://www.eorailway.co.uk/

The team at Epping Ongar Railway were delighted to welcome their “new” signalbox for Ongar, another step towards the exciting re-opening of the Essex branch.

The top half of the signalbox was lifted from its site at Managapps Farm Railway Museum in Burnham on Crouch and transported through Chelmsford to Ongar, with the operations arranged by the experts in ADT Group, and undertaken by Emerson Crane Hire.

The signalbox is an original Great Eastern building, built in the 1880’s, and originally signaled steam trains at Spellbrook. Following resignalling of the West Anglia line in late 2003, Stewart Webster helped save the box and moved it to safety at the railway museum at Burnham.

The team at Epping Ongar were delighted to be taking custody of this historic building, and will be installing it at the end of the Ongar platform, to replace the identical structure which was demolished by London Transport in the 1980’s.

Simon Hanney, General Manager of the Epping Ongar Railway, comments: “It was a very tense and exciting day, as it was carefully lifted and transported through Essex. The whole team are thrilled we are able to re-use the box for signaling our heritage trains, and as an identical match to the original, I suspect many of our visitors may never realize the exciting journey it has made to get to Ongar”.

Simon Hanney, General Manager; simonh@eorailway.co.uk

Railway Switchboard: 01277 365200

We are pleased to be able to show some footage from 1990 when a special event was held on the route between Epping and Ongar, celebrating it being 125 years since the Great Eastern Railway opened the Loughton – Ongar line.

Please go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11ksJjx35jw to view this fascinating video. Thanks to Simon Smiler for kindly providing this footage. 

Let’s hope we can provide some footage celebrating 145 years this year.  Please go to the How You Can Help page to help us make this a reality.

Some of the EORVS volunteers manned a table at the Shelley Community Event in Ongar on 9th March. Thanks to Bill Dale, John Dickenson, Carl Walker, Andrew Cook, Ron Abercrombie and Simon Hannay for putting the time in to attend this event which gave visitors the opportunity to see what’s been going on – and what’s going to happen at the railway.

Our stand was next to the F5 steam loco project stand and it was nice to talk to kindred spirit Steve Cooper, who is also an EORVS member.

The event attracted a wide spectrum of visitors, ranging from professionals from other organisations, Council officials and parents with children. It proved to be a good public relations exercise, as there were many local people interested in the railway who were talking to us and taking away copies of our new volunteer appeal leaflet.

A big thank you to member Paul Hale who donated the printing of the leaflets via his company ‘Concept Communications’ at Bishops Stortford. http://www.conceptcomms.com/

Bob Gillman