Railway Blogs

A HUGE thank you to the volunteers for operating the railway over the two days and Friday evening, without you we could not have had such a successful Balloon Festival.

Thank you to all who attended the railway as customers, we had first timers, regulars and those that went on the train several times over the weekend. Thank you for queueing up and being patient as we tried to carry all who wanted a ride on the trains.

We had small breakdowns, all fixed to keep everything flowing again.
Thank you to those who fixed and repaired broken airlines, carried fuel out to the loco when it ran out of fuel half away around the track.
Customers commented that these excitements, and other little touches too many to mention, all added to the fun on the day.

We will be back to our normal opening times next weekend of Sat/Sun 11:00-16:30.

THANK YOU for your support, from all of us at the WEE TRAIN

Here are some photos of the Wee Train and the Balloons having a great time together – please enjoy 😌

Only 10 days to go to the Strathaven Balloon Festival and its 25th anniversary. This year it will be held over the 22nd, 23rd and 24th of August.

We will be operating the railway in conjunction with this amazing event held in Strathaven Park.

Admission is FREE to the Balloon Festival. The railway will still charge only £1.00 per person riding on the trains.

For more information about the Balloon Festival please see their website link below.

https://www.strathavenballoonfestival.co.uk

We hope to operate a selection of different locos over the three days. Electric, Petrol and of course Steam.

From all of us at the Wee Train

The BBC do a ‘What’s On’ feature every Friday morning from 09:00 that shines a spotlight on events taking place at the weekend which gives event organisers (like us) an opportunity to spread the word and encourage their listeners to come along – And we’re on this Friday (1st Aug) 10:35 😁🎉

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002gg17  
The programme runs 09.00 -12.00.

From all of us at the Wee Trains 🚂

The Wee Trains will be running on Monday 9th June for the Duck Race from 4-8pm (weather permitting)

🚂 🦆🚂🦆🚂🦆🚂🦆

On Wed 16th May at Strathaven Park we celebrated the 76th year of Margaret and the miniature railway in the park. 

A huge thank 🙏 you to our guests who visited us and brought with them a great selection of steam and battery locomotives. 

A great team effort 🙌🏻 from all our volunteers who assisted with unloading and loading of visitors locos.
Thanks to Angus 🙏 in the kiosk feeding the early arrivals with hot rolls and a selection of fried items, and also to the team in the pavillion sproviding such a lovely lunch.

Our juniors arrived after school and added to the fun as they all vied for a locomotive to drive from the Class 67 to Neptune and others.

Thanks to Duane, Angus and Ian 🙏 for the selection of pictures below.

All of us at The Wee Train🚂 thanks everyone for a great 🌞 day 🎉 

Wednesday the 14th of May we will celebrate 🎉 76 years of the railway being in the park at Strathaven.
It will also be ” Margaret’s ” 76th birthday and to celebrate we will replicate the 13.00 whistle, on Margaret’s first day of running in the park all those years ago.

This will be an Open Track Day with visitors from other clubs bringing an assortment of different locomotives to run on our tracks.

We will NOT be open for public running but you are very welcome to come and look over the fence and see what is going on.

Thank you 🙏 to all who have volunteered over the last 50+ years from the Model Society to keep this wonderful link with the past still running today.

From all of us at the Wee Train

The Wee Train will be open this weekend Saturday, Sunday and Easter Monday from 11:00 to 16.30 – weather permitting.

We hope to be able to run a steam locomotive over the weekend, possibly on Saturday and Monday depending on the volunteers available.

We hope to see you at the park over the weekend.

From all of us at The WEE Train

Thank you to all who visited the railway at the weekend.
We all enjoyed the amazingly good weather 🌞 and the trains ran on both days with full coaches on most journeys.
THANK YOU 🙏 for giving us a great start to the new season.
Below are a couple of pictures of the first passengers on the new carriages.

On Monday we held a driver awareness day with several of our juniors in attendance.
A good day was had by all thank you to the parents who started with us while the juniors had fun on different locomotives.

From all of us The Wee Train

Almost time for the new season to start, at a slightly earlier date than initially thought.

We are all ready for the season and are ready to welcome old and new supporters of the miniature railway this weekend.
Running both days from 11.00 through to 16.30 weather permitting.

We were contacted by the Daily Record, Lanarkshire Live and the EK News.
They have just published the following article online – see the link below, next week it will be in hardcopy in the EK News.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/in-your-area/lanarkshire/strathaven-miniature-railway-launches-modern-34944769

We are looking forward to seeing everyone over the new running season starting tomorrow.

From all of us at The Wee Train

Woo hoo

Only ONE week to go before we start our new season !

This Saturday coming, the 29th March, at 11.00 am weather permitting our first trains of the year will be ready to take passengers birling around our track again.

We previously intimated that we will have a BIG SURPRISE to start the season.

And here it is, we have been working all winter in preparing a set of six new carriages ready for next weekend.

See below the pictures of the new carriages which have all been fitted with new airbrake systems to make them compatible with our locomotives.
These carriages were supplied by Abbots Model Engineering and then we did all the conversions to our specifications.

Looking forward to seeing you all at the park next week.

From all of us at the Wee Train