On the weekend of 26th and 27th September 2026, FRARS returned to Shillingstone railway station in north Dorset for Railways on the Air.
The North Dorset Railway is centered on Shillingstone station and the short section of line that still sits beside it, which is one of the last remaining sections of the old Somerset and Dorset Railway.
While trains aren’t able to run from the station, the remaining line, station building and rolling stock are maintained by a dedicated team of volunteers. The station cafe still runs on open days as well and serves some great pasties and cakes!
You can find more information about the restoration project on the North Dorset Railway website.
As in previous years, FRARS were granted use of the reconstructed signal box, which is sadly not the original building, but has been reconstructed close to its original form thanks to the involvement of an ex-signalman with the North Dorset Railway project. Equipment has been brought in from other locations, including the fine-looking set of signal and points levers, some of which are now connected and live.
With few railway volunteers in the signal box over the weekend, we did our best to explain to the public what they were looking at, while we took a break from the radio!
Over the course of the weekend we operated on the 40m, 20m and 2m bands, voice and digital modes, with unfortunately only modest success. Background noise levels were extremely high throughout the weekend, registering S9 at times across the HF bands. The railway volunteers were very helpful in turning off various power supplies, but sadly the noise remained, we suspect due to activity on the adjacent industrial estate. As such, we were reluctant to call “CQ” very much, and got only a few dozen contacts in the log.
The situation on VHF was not much better. Although we did not have a QRM problem to contend with, Shillingstone is down in a valley between two large hills, and despite running 50W into a vertical around 10m above ground, we made only one 2m contact, G4BIN/AM. Nothing says you’re down in a valley quite like only being able to make contact with someone in an aircraft!
Regardless of the disappointing radio conditions, the FRARS team had a great time, and fingers crossed will be returning next year!
