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Although the company operate tours to diesel-operated railways, the focus of FarRail is based on creating authentic looking steam trains worldwide.
FarRail repairs wagons, re-paints coaches to their original liveries and sometimes overhauls steam locomotives in Burma, Sri Lanka or Pakistan. Of course this comes at a price, but without these efforts the number of “playgrounds“ for the railway photographer would be virtually zero.
It is the same in Bulgaria. After the pandemic and not using steam locomotives, FarRail say the management is thinking about stopping efforts to keep their steam locomotives in working condition.
To prevent this FarRail have planned a tour to Bulgaria in October 2022 to combine with the Welsh tour in November. There are direct flights from Sofia to Manchester.
“We’ve chosen three lines, two standard gauge and the famous narrow gauge line into the Rhodope Mountains.
“We’ll use the large 4-8-2 class 03 with a passenger consist, the 2-10-2 narrow gauge locomotive 60976 and either the heavier German ‘Kriegslok’ class 16 (German class 42) 2-10-0 or the largest tank loco in Europe, the magnificent 2-12-4 with a freight consist.”
The latter is the star of the Bulgarian railway, but it’s not yet sure whether the scheduled overhaul can be finished in time for their tour. FarRail will push as much as they can.
“The more people coming on the tour the more pressure we can exert to make sure it’s finished in time.”
Visit www.farrail.com for more information.
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