THE restoration of LSWR Adams 4-4-0 T3 No. 563 to working order at Bill Parker’s Flour Mill workshop, as reported in Headline News 8-9 in this issue, narrowly missed out on being completed in time for it to bring a special Victorian train into Waterloo from Strawberry Hill depot in the early hours of Tuesday, July 11 – arepeat performance from the centenary celebrations of June 14, 1948.
It was hoped that the newly-overhauled locomotive would be available with two Victorian carriages to celebrate a major anniversary of the UK’s busiest station. Instead, South Western Railway brought a new Bombardier-built Arterio train into Platform 19 as a glimpse of the future. The £1 billion fleet of 90 South Western Railways trains is intended to transform travel on the operators’ Reading, Windsor and South West London suburban
