Steaming back to Cauldon Lowe

Crowds poured into the Staffordshire Moorlands over the weekend of 13/14 November a few years ago for the first of three gala events to mark the return of traffic to the long-mothballed Cauldon Lowe branch.

In what may be considered a ‘first’ for preservation, the new company which now controls the branch ‘hired’ the adjacent Churnet Valley Railway to run a star-studded line-up of steam trains with stunning success, as a precursor to what may well become a standard gauge ‘heritage’ network.