Malta Railway Blog

Here you’ll find all the latest news and discoveries. There’s plenty to see, including many research updates covering investigations that have helped inform the main pages on this site, and odd stories that we’ve not been able to fit in elsewhere. Have fun exploring.

Platform pump paradox

This curious contraption at the end of Museum railway station is a hand pump used to fill the tanks of the Malta Railway engines with[…]

A bridge too many

I’ve talked before about the clash between the line of the Malta Railway and the Wignacourt Aqueduct and how it was resolved by a syphon[…]

Derelict railway engine outside the old Hamrun engine shed surrounded by scrap

Coupled in decay

Years after the closure of the Malta Railway remnants littered the former railway yard at Hamrun. Here, surrounded by scrap, Engine No.1 hangs on sandwiching[…]

Another forgotten survival

When the Malta Railway was built through Attard it had to deal with the Knight’s era Wignacourt Aqueduct descending on a slight gradient through the[…]

Unravelling spaghetti

Close inspection of an early plan to tunnel the Malta Railway under Mdina, drawn in around 1894, reveals a spaghetti of crayon lines in red[…]

Failing to fall for Fell

One of the early proposals for a railway in Malta was promoted by Major Hutchinson, an officer of the Royal Artillery, recorded as being promoted[…]

Hamrun hammer-forge

A while ago I posted a query about a chimney that appeared in the background of a photo of Hamrun, the structure projecting above the[…]

Floriana station vents

The photographer in the above image here must be stood almost outside the station building at Floriana looking back at the Wignacourt water tower, The[…]

A change of plan

In 1883 the Malta Railway company directors reported to their investors that the Government Supervision Board had required them to move their originally planned location[…]

Following Floriana tunnel

A good quality photo of Floriana from the collections of the V&A museum reveals the chain of ventilation shafts over the Malta Railway tunnel. They[…]