A bumper 28-page issue of 'The Colonel' (No. 97) was published last week.

Robert Kosmider, proprietor of specialist kit maker Steam & Things, explains why he produces models of the Colonel's railways. The missing link between Bodiam and Robertsbridge features in an historical piece by Tom Burnham who explains why the restoration started from Tenterden, while Mark Yonge describes recent progress on extending the line from Bodiam towards Robertsbridge. Tony Adams in 'Dispatches' imagines what HFS would do in the present situation. He even suggests a diesel-powered replica of Gazelle!

John Simmonds recalls his childhood at Eythorne where he observed the East Kent Railway at work. Albyn Austin laments the candidates for preservation which never made it in an article entitled 'The Ones That Got Away'. He includes Dom, the Jersey Eastern Railway Sentinal railcar and the Wolseley railmotor.

Several issues of 'The Colonel' have contained information about rail guns on the Colonel's lines. This time we have a reproduction of a plan of a siding for a rail gun installed on a section of the abandoned Selsey Tramway. A little more light is shed on the mysterious and short-lived through carriage from London to Tenterden.

David Powell reports the latest information on the Society's next Members' Weekend to be based at the National Railway Museum in York, starting on Saturday 15th May.

All this and the regular columns: Press Digest, Jackson's Jottings and Dispatches, together with a new one, 'Blasts From the Past'.