TRAIN tracks will be tinged with nostalgia as an evocative new year celebration event brings a mixture of steam and diesel passenger trains to the Isle of Purbeck.
Taking place on Saturday, January 7, and Sunday, January 8, the special Winter Warm Up event will see two 1960s main line heritage diesel locomotives in action as well as two main line steam locomotives, one from the 1920s and the other from the 1940s.
Operating to an intensive timetable – and running subject to availability and short notice change – the trains will be running between Norden, Corfe Castle, Harman’s Cross and Swanage between 9.45am and 5.10pm.
One of the heritage diesels hauling the trains will be the last locomotive to run from Poole to Broadstone and Wimborne when the line closed to freight trains in 1977.
At Corfe Castle station, the goods shed museum will be open across the weekend, along with the signal box museum and the fund-raising book wagon.
The first steam locomotive to be featured in the Winter Warm Up will be ex-Southern Railway late 1920s U class No. 31806, which used to haul holidaymaker trains to Corfe Castle and Swanage during the 1950s.
The first heritage diesel locomotive to be featured will be 1968 ex-British Rail Class 50 diesel-electric No. 50 026 ‘Indomitable’, which operated on the main line until 1990 and carries a nostalgic 1980s British Rail Network South East livery.
Robert Patterson, volunteer chairman of the Swanage Railway Company, said: “Freight trains, like the one we will be re-creating during the two days of our Winter Warm Up event, used to run across the south of England for decades delivering goods and farm produce.
“British Railways stopped running freight trains to Corfe Castle and Swanage in 1965, a year before steam trains were replaced by diesel trains on the Swanage branch and six years before the line was controversially closed and demolished.
“It is not often that a Class 50 diesel-electric locomotive runs on the Swanage Railway so having the splendidly restored ‘Indomitable’ hauling some of the trains will be a real treat.”
The Swanage Railway is welcoming new volunteers.
Call 01929 408466 or email iwanttovolunteer@swanagerailway.co.uk for more information.
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