Railway Blogs

Scotland’s largest Balloon Festival will be held in Strathaven park over three days, the evening of Friday 25th and two full days of activities on Sat 26th/ Sun 27th of August.

Please follow the link to the website of the Balloon festival for more information. 

https://www.strathavenballoonfestival.co.uk/

Information regarding event times and parking is available at this site. 

🚂 The miniature railway will operate over the three days weather permitting 
Friday from 5pm till 8.30 pm
Saturday from 9.30 am till 9.00 pm
Sunday 10am though to 8.00 pm. 

All of the above weather permitting.

A big thank you in advance to all the volunteers who will cover these three days 🙏

From all of us at the Wee Train

Additional Running Day this week

We will be operating the railway on :-
Thursday the 20th from 11:00 am to 16.30 pm.

We have a large group of youngsters 6-14 years old (60+) arriving from Ayrshire visiting the park for their annual visit and they cannot come to Strathaven park without a ride on the trains in the park .
Therefore we will be open to the public during their annual visit.

Here is a link to their page –
https://www.facebook.com/aceswoodwynd/?locale=en_GB

From all of us at the Wee Train.

The Wee Train welcomed a new loco at the end of last month and we have now completed the commissioning work on the engine and started to train drivers for this new locomotive.

We have also ordered new badges which should be here by the 23rd of this month. These will be of Neptune and Titan, our two seven and a quarter gauge battery locomotives. It is hoped to have both pulling passengers in the near future.

See pictures of commissioning and the new badges above and here’s a Video of Neptune in action !

From all of us at the Wee Train.

Glasgow Fair Weekend

Weather permitting the railway will be open and running our Fair Weekend service from 11am until 4.30pm Saturday, Sunday AND Monday.

If the weather is kind, we’ll hopefully be able to have one of the steam loco’s out on the track (probably Monday) too

We’ll hopefully see you down at Strathaven Park

From all of us at the wee train

On the evening of the 22nd of June, we took delivery of a brand new battery locomotive supplied and built by Abbot Model Engineering.
The locomotive is one of their Neptune 4 (7 1/4″) locomotives, capable of pulling 10 -15 passengers depending on weight etc.

As you can see from the images below the locomotive has been painted in the Strathaven Miniature Railway colours and has a railway totem showing the club’s name.

We are hoping (weather permitting) to commission this loco on Saturday and put her on display at the steaming bays. She will be used along with Titan, our other battery locomotive to pull passengers when we wish to have a battery (Electric) day in the park.

We will be open as usual this weekend 24th and 25th of June

From all of us at the Wee Train

GALA WEEK

Thank you to Eilidh ( Primary 5 Wester Overton Primary School) for including the railway in her award winning cover for this year’s Gala Week programme. Congratulations.

Today (Sunday) sees the start of Gala Week in Strathaven.

We will be out to support the park events on Monday with trains running on Monday evening from around 6 pm to 8.30 pm
A donation bucket will be in operation for this event .

On Saturday 10th June – GALA DAY – we will be running longer than normal as long as we have visitors from all over and far afield who will wish to journey around our tracks.
Running will commence as soon as we are set up but no later than 11am, close of business will depend on how busy the park is at 5pm.

From all of us at The Wee Train.

The sun is shining and the railway will be open all three days of this bank holiday weekend.
At least one steam engine will feature each afternoon hauling passengers around our track.

New opening times 11am to 4.30pm, maybe slightly later if we are busy in the park.

Come along and have a ride around the oldest miniature railway track in Scotland 74 years young

From all of us at the Wee Train

We’d like to thank Artianne for coming back and refreshing the original mural on the kiosk which had sun and water damage.
This will now be varnished to preserve this artwork for the future.

While Anne was visiting the park, we commissioned her to paint a new mural on the sidewall of our station building. This has been completed this evening, again our thanks to artianne for this vibrant addition to our kiosk.

HAPPY 74th BIRTHDAY MARGARET

It’s a very special day today at Strathaven Miniature Railway in Strathaven Park. Our oldest loco on the oldest miniature railway in Scotland is 74 years old today

Margaret has been pulling passengers around the tracks in the park since the 14th of May 1949

AND SHE IS ON THE TRACKS TODAY!!

Up to steam pressure and ready to take passengers on some nostalgic journeys around our railway..!

This is testament to our team of volunteers who have kept her maintained and in pristine condition all these years.

Today is a day to definitely get to the railway if you can.
Fingers crossed the weather holds for our old girls birthday

Coronation Sunday

We will be setting up early again today and we hope to see plenty more visitors to the railway during the rest of the coronation extended weekend

Our special commemorative badges are still on sale but not many left – still at £2.00 each.

We will still have all the flags and bunting out ready to continue this a memorable weekend in fine style.

Below you can see some pictures from yesterday, we had one very excited train load of children all with their own flags and in the case of the girls, tiaras as well

A very royal train indeed

We will be open from 11.00am weather permitting

From all of us at the Wee Train