August

Friday 1st was the first day of the Spa Valley's diesel gala. After behaving itself during the previous day, the loco decided to suffer a brake fault and missed its first journey. The fault was diagnosed as a defective relay valve which was attended to immediately the loco got on shed. After testing on shed, 37254 joined 33063 for a trip to Groombridge and back (the train was booked for 33063 only but it got the 37 into the right place for the next trip). 254 performed perfectly for the rest of the day and the three evening runs were a good example of how noisy a 37 can be! Throughout the day, Meridian TV were filming the news programmes from the railway and the railway gained a massive amount of publicity through this. Three of the presenters visited the loco during the day and seemed to enjoy blowing the horn as well as touring the locomotive (as seen in the photograph below 'Gemma Humphries' weather forecaster).

Saturday 2nd saw 254 work two return trips before failing not far from Tunbridge Wells West with what turned out to be a load regulator fault! Rescue came in the form of 33063 with "AA" on the blinds... 254 was parked on shed and work was commenced on rectifying the defect. After a couple of hours working on the loco, 254 was up and running and was tested in the yard. 33063 and 37254 went out for a short test run in between the 17:26 arrival and the 17:40 departure and the loco was fit for traffic yet again! The loco picked up its booked workings from the 19:40 service that evening (with 73140 accompanying the loco in case of any problems - not needed though)!

37254 decided that two off-days in a row were enough and performed superbly all day on Sunday 3rd (the last day of the Summer Diesel Gala)! In the afternoon, the loco was tested in multiple with 33065 around the yard and then they went out paired up on the 15:00 departure from Tunbridge Wells West. Once 254 had arrived back at The Wells with its train, it was tested in multiple with 33063 and these two locos worked the 17:00 departure together. We had been wanting to test the multiple working equipment for quite some time and it was proved to be working!

A big thank you to all the visitors to the Spa Valley Railway's gala - we hope to see you in October for the next diesel gala.
 

Over the last few months we all talked about building a new website for the ‘Fund’. This was to be one of Octobers main jobs and what a job it turned out to be too. John decided to undertake this task, with nearly 50 pages at 2 hours per page this turned out to be no 2-minute job…(sorry Nat) I really pushed myself to get the site up and running before the October 18th /19th Diesel Gala as this would hopefully provide extra advertising for the railway and us.

The sales section of the site is still being worked on and will be made live over the next couple of weeks so please keep checking for updates. As too will the members area and membership section, full details to come… However you can register your initial interest in becoming a member at

The loco had a faultless performance over the weekend of the Autumn Diesel Gala, this made up for some of the teething problems that were encountered during the last event.

We have entered leaf fall season once again; yes the good old excuse of leaves on the line can be used for the late running of trains… Joking apart this did prove to be a slight issue on the Saturday morning that combined with early morning dew on the rail head, did make for very poor rail head conditions (especially in the Adams Well area) for the first ‘down’ train on the Saturday. Another good reason to crack on with the overhaul of some of our sander valves!

It was great to see ‘Martin Bray’ and Chloe that made the massive trek over to us from Swansea! Hope you enjoyed your weekend in sunny Kent… Martin has set up an archive page for us, featuring the locomotive’s working life in He has also got some great coverage of the weekend as can be seen

We are awaiting confirmation of next years running days for 254, as soon as we know we will post them here on the site. Next year will be very exciting for the Spa Valley Railway and all involved with 254 as we will start running through to Eridge! We will be using the down platform so the locomotive will once again be passing mainline traffic!

It is envisaged that the locomotive will remain operation throughout the winter months to assist in the railways departmental requirements.

membership@37254.co.uk