The National Rail Museum has announced that it will be using the Olton Hall, known to Potter fans as the Hogwarts Express, as a shuttle between it’s two museums [The National Rail Museum and Locomotion] for the next two weekends.
Olton Hall, which featured in the Harry Potter films as the Hogwarts Express, along with No. 70013 Oliver Cromwell, which pulled British Rail’s last steam-hauled train in 1968, will be used for the shuttle services that start this weekend and continue on September 24 and 25. While Olton Hall has been a regular visitor to the NRM in York, the locomotive has only appeared in fully operational steam on a handful of occasions.
The NRM’s head of knowledge and collections, Helen Ashby, said: “We’re delighted to finally announce the names of the two steam locomotives expected to haul our September shuttles, especially as both are railway icons in their own right. The shuttles provide a rare opportunity for members of the public to ride on an operational steam locomotive and take advantage of two museums dedicated to railways at either end of the line. It seems only fitting that such big names in steam take centre stage at this milestone event in the history of the two museums.”
GiratempoWeb has released a bunch of new behind the scenes photos from the Final Battle scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II. The new photos may be seen in the gallery!
Thanks SS!
Auction site proxibid has a very interesting auction coming up next month: a pair of boots that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling wore while writing a large part of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The auction for the boots begins on Friday, October 21st at 8:00 am Central time. For full information please visit the lot page. The page even includes a copy of a the letter described in the paragraph below, handwritten by JK Rowling.
In the fall of 1999, the fifth grade class at Harrison Elementary School, located in Omaha, NE, conducted a project called “Operation Shoe Tree.” This project was developed for students to reach out to local celebrities and inquire about their daily lives, from the perspective of the celebrity’s shoes. Emily Waldo, a student in the class, wrote an interview letter to J.K. Rowling, asking to interview her shoes. The original letter is attached with J.K’s hand-written response and signature. Several weeks later a package arrived at Emily’s school with the interview letter, a personal letter from Fiddy Henderson, J.K. Rowling’s personal assistant, and a pair of boots. The boots, the subject of the interview and as described in the letter, were the boots J.K. Rowling wore when she wrote several chapters of the first Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (published in the U.S. as “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”). This book, and the many to follow, were all adapted into major motion pictures, entertaining and inspiring millions of people around the world.
Daniel Radcliffe will be visiting Anderson Cooper’s new talk show “Anderson” tomorrow, September 13th! Daniel will be chatting about the risks he took after “Harry Potter” as part of the special “Summer’s Best” episode. Photos from Dan’s appearance may be seen here, the first two are of Daniel, the rest are other guests. You can watch Daniel walking in below:
The Pottermore Insider blog has been updated to let fans know that Welcome emails will be going out DAILY for the next two weeks! Previously they had been sending out welcome emails in batches and then making sure bugs were fixed before sending out new emails. According to the blog:
The good news is that we no longer expect to pause sending these (as mentioned in our Beta testing and Welcome emails post). Instead, we plan to send emails out daily over the next two weeks. As always, there’s a chance that our plans may alter as we assess the site and how it is reacting to new users but we will update you if anything changes.
Have you received your email yet? I finally got mine on Tuesday but haven’t really been able to explore yet.
[You may have noticed that news has been a bit slow, this is because I moved out of my parent’s house a couple of weeks ago and still have no cable or internet at my new house, we’re supposed to get it on September 22nd so after that news will be normal. But for now I can only update during my lunch break at work or if there is a lull]
Fans taking part in Harry Potter: The Quest have unlocked yet another video feature! This clip is a first look at Creating The World Of Harry Potter – Growing Up With Harry Potter, which will be featured in the Ultimate Edition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, which will be released in 2012.
