FIRST A ROYAL TRAIN, AND NOW A FREIGHT SERVICE!
7th April 2024
For a pioneering, award winning railway around a mile long, the Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway packs a lot onto its two-foot gauge tracks using rolling stock up to 120 years old.
In April 2017, the line in the Skegness Water Leisure Park in Walls Lane, Ingoldmells, operated a Royal Train for HRH The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, to experience the restoration of historic railway vehicles from the trench railways of the World War One battlefields and the LCLR’s collection of English narrow gauge railway vehicles, meeting the dedicated volunteers who make it possible.
The railway is now planning to operate freight trains in connection with the construction of a new station and interpretation centre at its South Loop terminus, which is being made possible by a £24,250 grant from the Government’s Levelling Up programme and match funding of £8,000 from the railway’s hosts and owners of the Skegness Water Leisure Park, Ellis. Bros. Ltd.
Record amounts of rainfall over the winter have made it impossible for road vehicles to convey construction material (cement, aggregates, posts, fittings etc.) to the site.
So as the railway and its rolling stock was first constructed by the British Army in World War One to transport soldiers, weapons, food and supplies across the otherwise impassable muddy quagmires of the battlefields in France – the same solution has been devised to transport everything to the site to build the new station.
Supplies will be transferred at the railway’s headquarters into wagons which first saw service on those military railways, then moved to the construction site for contractors to work on the new platform and facilities.
Railway spokesman John Chappell said: “When the railway opened at the original site in Humberston near Cleethorpes in August 1960, as the first heritage railway in the world to be built by enthusiasts, no-one could have foreseen its present extraordinary achievements which have followed its reopening in the Skegness Water Leisure Park in 2009. A Royal train and freight services – all on a line around a mile long, run entirely by dedicated volunteers.
A photo from 2017 showing LCLR Simplex no 6 with two ex WD class D bogie wagons of the type that will be used in the transferring of building supplies to the new station site at South Loop.
An earlier photo from 2010 showing same loco with a class P four wheel wagon and a class D with drop down sides removed.