SWANAGE RAILWAY TO FEATURE AS LEAD ARTICLE IN THE 100th EDITION OF HERITAGE RAILWAY MAGAZINE - JULY 2007

News Item from Keith Morgan - dated 28th June 2007
Photographs are copyright Andrew P.M. Wright unless otherwise acknowledged.
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The history of the Swanage Railway's relaid Purbeck Line, and its impending end of Southern steam celebrations, are to feature in the 100th edition of the 'Heritage Railway' magazine - as its lead article!

Full visitor information for the 40th Anniversary event 7th-9th July 2007, click here

Written by our very own Andrew P.M. Wright - Swanage Railway's official photographer who wrote two acclaimed and nationally published books on the branch line in 1987 and 1992 - the feature is accompanied by a selection of rare photographs. (Order your copy on-line direct from Heritage Railway by clicking on the magazine cover photo).

First walking the abandoned trackbed from Corfe Castle to Swanage in the summer of 1980, Andrew has been a Swanage Railway member since 1982 and worked for five years in the railway's S&T department.

The major feature article features the end of Southern steam on the Swanage branch in 1966 and 1967 with the arrival of diesel traction.

It also includes a look forward to the 40th anniversary end of Southern steam celebrations on the Purbeck Line on Saturday 7th, Sunday 8th and Monday 9th July, 2007, when no less than seven steam locomotives will be operating.

They will include the first BR Class 4 2-6-0 tender steam locomotive to run at Swanage since May, 1967, and the first steam locomotive to come in from the main line at Wareham since June, 1967.

Andrew's article also details the sad decline of the Swanage branch - and the several closure proposals by BR in the late 1960s - as well as its end in 1972, including the last train and the hurried track lifting during the hot summer of that year.

What follows after that all time low point in the major Heritage Railway feature article is a fascinating, moving and highly readable account of how the first Swanage Railway volunteers fought tenaciously and persistently to just be allowed access to the decaying terminal station site to begin restoration work.

Andrew then details how it all began at Swanage one cold February day in 1976 when access was gained to the boarded up station - and then how the track was slowly relaid by hand, metre by metre, amid the desolation so that the first trains could run over a few hundred yards of track in August, 1979.

The feature article then details how the railway slowly expanded with locomotives, carriages and wagons arriving by road. Herston Halt was built in 1983 and accepted its first passenger train in April, 1984.

Andrew then explains how the tracks were steadily laid westwards - to the one and a half mile point just short of New Barn where push-pull trains started running in July, 1987.

Harman's Cross was reached in the winter of 1987 and the station built out of the mud in 1988 and the first public passenger train running in March, 1989.

With the threat of a bypass being built on the site of Corfe Castle station being lifted in 1986, the Swanage Railway reached the village in 1991 and the site of where Norden station would be built in 1992.

Delayed by the 1991 financial crisis that very nearly killed off the railway, the first passenger trains ran from Swanage to Corfe Castle and Norden in August, 1995.

All in all, Andrew P.M. Wright's major feature article is a fascinating tale and a very good read - with some splendid pictures to boot!

So, make sure you pick up your copy of the 100th edition of Heritage Railway before they sell out because it is set to become a real collector's item.

Heritage Railway goes on sale at newsagents countrywide from Thursday 5th July 2007.

Full visitor information for the 40th Anniversary event 7th-9th July 2007, click here