SWANAGE Railway volunteers have celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the heritage line's first passenger train journey to Corfe Castle and Norden.

The rebuilding of two-and-a-half miles of line from Harman's Cross to Corfe Castle and Norden cost £360,000 and took seven years.

On a sunny August day in 1995, the first passenger train since 1972 ran on the restored line.

Swanage Railway general manager Matt Green said: "The amount of effort that goes into extending a preserved railway is huge so to achieve the extension to Norden against all the odds - including fighting off a proposed bypass on the disused line through Corfe Castle - is incredible."

In the two decades that followed around four million passengers have taken the train from Norden and Corfe Castle to Swanage.

Volunteer Stuart Vousden drove some of the trains to Corfe on that first day in 1995, and 20 years later he was back behind the controls on the same route.

Mr Green said: "It is fantastic so many of those people who helped with the opening of the line to Corfe Castle and Norden 20 years ago are still with the Swanage Railway today.

"For those who have moved on, or have sadly died, the railway stands as a lasting memorial to their determined efforts."

By the end of the first week of extended train operations in August, 1995, around 20,000 passengers had travelled on the new section.

The cost of relaying the line from Harman's Cross to Corfe Castle and Norden was almost five times the original cost of building the entire ten-mile branch line from Wareham to Swanage in 1883 and 1884.