Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway

It’s been a long time since we travelled on this one. In the intervening half a century, or so, the L&HR appears to have just carried on doing its own thing and doing it very nicely. Its own thing is taking full advantage of its Lake District location and selling itself very effectively as a tourist railway. Proximity to the honey-pot sites at Windermere and Bowness helps in this respect and the link with the lake ferries is a key component. Foreign visitors and coach parties are very much part of the formula.

The same three British Railways survivors from the age of steam are still here but although the Ivatt Class 2 was resplendent in the yard, she too was receiving attention, whilst the two unique Fairburn tanks were both out of action in the sheds. It was left to the Hunslet WD industrial No. 25 Sapper, lined out in an attractive Kent and East Sussex Railway livery to provide passenger services on the day.

The short journey up the side of the River Leven passes the important industrial heritage site at Backbarrow, where remaining evidence of eighteenth-century iron making is gradually being appropriately preserved. The hotel we stayed in there was once a factory making the blue dye used in soap powders. I came here by coach as part of a six-form field course based near Carlisle in 1966, and remember our geography teacher, Brian Gordon, pointing out that the windows of the factory were all stained blue as a result of the no-doubt rather uncomfortable working practices taking place inside.

The Stainmore Railway

We called in to Kirkby Stephen East station on our way to the Lake District. The Stainmore route was a coast-to-coast railway that crossed the Pennine moorlands, joining Darlington on the East Coast Main Line in the east to Penrith and Tebay on the West Coast Main Line in the west. The line was opened by the South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway in 1861, primarily to carry coal and iron ore. The mountain route involved the construction of a series of bridges and viaducts. The line closed as a through route in 1962.

The Stainmore Railway Company was set up in 2000 as a heritage centre based on the station site at Kirkby Stephen, which has since been restored. Trains operate on a short section of reinstated track heading west. On the day we visited, two beautifully restored ex-LNER Gresley teak carriages were sandwiched between two top-and-tail diesels for the brief round trip along the line. As with so many of the heritage lines during this hot summer, the usual steam power was not operating because of the risk of lineside fires. Part of the track bed to the east of the station has become a multi-use recreational path, which heads off up the Eden valley and into the hills where some of the remaining viaducts can still be seen.

Princes Risborough station

Chiltern Railways run all passenger services out of Princes Risborough, namely north east to Aylesbury from the bay platform one, north to Banbury, Oxford and Birmingham from platform three and south to London Marylebone on platform two. A central fast line to London allows expresses not stopping here a clear run through the station. This junction station also had branches to Watlington and Thame that closed decades ago, before the Chinnor heritage line was re-established from platform four. The site also boasts the largest remaining GWR designed signalbox in Britain. It operated between 1904 and 1991 and is now being refurbished by the heritage railway, although signalling itself is controlled from Marylebone.

The original GWR station building remains in place at the station entrance and facing onto platform two. The station building houses a ticket office, which is open for most of the time that trains are running. Platform two is bi-directional so that trains, and especially freights, can access the east spur to the north of the station towards Aylesbury. Our visit coincided with the arrival of two Class 66s, top and tailing aggregate wagons and taking that route. We also saw one of the push and pull Marylebone-bound expresses shoot through on the centre road behind Class 68 No. 68031. These locos, surely one of the best diesel designs of all time, look resplendent in their more recently applied Chiltern blue livery.

  

Chinnor and Princes Risborough Railway

The C&PRR began life as the Watlington and Princes Risborough Railway in 1872 but was uneconomic from the start and was taken over by the GWR in 1883. It closed to passengers in 1957 and to goods and parcels in 1961. The section between Chinnor and Princes Risborough was retained to serve the Chinnor cement works until 1989. The heritage railway association took it over in the following year and ran their first train in 1994. In 2025, the link with the main line and platform 4 at Princes Risborough station was reinstated.

It was a scorcher on our visit last week, so much so that the usual steam service could not operate because of the fire risk, and so we were left in the hands of Brush Type 4 No. D1501 [47402] for the round trip from the pleasantly restored Chinnor station.  

Railart 2026

The Guild of Railway Artists annual exhibition opened yesterday in the gallery above Kidderminster Railway Museum at the Severn Valley Railway. There are 58 paintings on display, all in the representational style and most paying tribute to the age of steam. Two outstanding pieces by Malcolm Root set in Southampton docks were attracting a lot of attention at the preview. I was particularly drawn to the work of Stephen Warnes, who captured an unusual angle for his Misty Morning Carnforth M.P.D. and displayed admirable technical ability and imagination in Evening Train from Edinburgh. He also struck a chord with his Morning Train - Albula Line, set at Tiefencastel, Switzerland, which we had enjoyed first-hand only last year.