Southwold Railway

Ah, American visitors! I've worked in a couple of jobs that involved Americans, and inevitably we used to show them round. To quote one, "Hey, look, a pink house with a grass roof! Let's go in and look." "Um, no, that's really someone's home, it's not a visitor attraction, it's private." It took some time to get this through to several of them.

Sorry, off topic.

 

Looks like a lot of progress...

https://www.southwoldrailway.co.uk/season-of-mists-and-mellow-fruitfulness/

 

Also good update phots of Blyth posted on North Bay Railway Engineering Services facebook page

 

With the colour of that protective sheet, I had to do a double take of the welder shot .... I thought the work was being done in Lilliput for a moment there!

Fantastic progress, way ahead of what I'd been expecting. I wonder whether the sight of an authentic Southwold loco, now clearly on the horizon, might even soften some hearts among those currently opposed to the line?

 

The FB page for North Bay Railway Engineering Services is showing some incredible progress on ‘Blyth’.

 

Stone the crows ..... they're really not hanging around. Fantastic!

 

https://www.facebook.com/North-Bay-...4/photos/pcb.862436891178254/862436797844930/

 

It looks like the loco will be finished well before the railway. Running-in trials next year on the Isle of Man?

 

If the dosh for transport is provided, along with permissions insurance and sanction of the owning trust, I would think anything is possible.

In the meantime, they need anyone who would like to see it run on the Island, or indeed in England, to contribute to the current £80000 financial black hole to allow it to be finished otherwise the dream may not happen.

If it is funded, to be in steam next summer is a realistic date.

 

There is that £80k of funding to find first. And we might only see Isle of Man activity generally online. The TT races for 2021 have been called off today.

 

theres some 3 ft at Statfold..............

 

There's still some at Camber too .... though not having been used since WWII, it's not in particularly good nick. It runs a couple of hundred yards north of the old tram station, as far as the gravel pit which obliterated the right of way. The concrete is a legacy of wartime Admiralty use.



[Image courtesy Urban75]

 

Hopefully, when people will see at what an advanced stage ‘Blyth’ is at, it will encourage them to donate towards its completion.

 

Looking good - but I hope they have somewhere to run it. Maybe that Camber bit will polish up.

You could post it to the IoM, but I don't think they'd let you in with it at the moment, and so they've got no reason to want it right now. Although it would look very well posed next to the Groundle Glen engines

 

They have been laying track within the confines of their site in Southwold - certainly enough to demonstrate it to visitors.....
https://www.southwoldrailway.co.uk/lockdown-mk-ii-and-blyth-progress/

 

Indeed!, I've been there, it's not going to be much of a run though is it?
(and I will go back next summer if we can get there...)

 

My earnest hope is Blyth will be seen locally as a sign the railway not only means business, but is something to be extremely proud of and might - whisper it quietly, down a well at midnight - convince enough amongst the East Suffolk Flat Earth Society that restoring the railway, far from being a bad thing to be fought tooth and nail, will actually help the local economy, most especially those non-retirees who want to remain in their native community and (with the attention to detail the SRT has shown to date) quite likely even result in a few more parking spaces being available for the residents of Southwold.

With any new build, I keep wondering just where that magic tipping point is, somewhere between having done enough design work to start cutting metal and producing a rolling chassis, which defines in folks' minds that donating to any project is worthwhile.

In the case of Blyth, such has been the superb progress over the last few months (it's certainly caught me on the hop), that it's ruddy obvious to even the most hardened cynic that completion of this lovely little loco has moved from a possibility, through being a probability, to a 'let's dig in and do that last push get it steaming'.

I'm flogging my memory to think of the last new 3'-0" gauge steam loco built for use in these islands and I think, for passenger use, it may well be Beyer Peacock Mannin for the IMR in 1926 and the very last of all, at least until now(!), the trio built by Andrew Barclay for Bord na Móna in 1949.

 

I think there is a medium to long term aim
to relay the harbour branch before tackling the main route.

local opposition would probably be the main hurdle to this.

 

As for ‘Blyth’ I honestly thought, when the project started, that in 2020 it would still be just a fundraising page and a chimney. I’m very happy to have been proven wrong and will be donating to the project.

A working 3ft gauge steam locomotive will be a huge boost for publicity.

I was just thinking of that scene in ‘Titfield Thunderbolt’ where the little GWR tank engine does battle with the steam roller.

In Southwold that would be ‘Blyth’ vs an Audi or BMW

 

My concern there is that there seem to be two separate railways on the old trackbed.