Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway - making tracks while closed

The Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway (LCLR) is a 60 cm narrow gauge heritage railway, approximately 0.75 miles long, situated in Ingoldmells at Skegness Water Leisure Park.

Volunteer Chris Bates said: "It's quite amazing how much we are achieving this year - but we do miss our passengers and especially the looks of delight on faces young and old, when they experience a real live steam engine at work (or one of our wonderful old diesels) - they are living history, travelling on or with trains more than a hundred years old in some cases.

"It was a great disappointment to us not being able to run in 2020, especially as it is our 60th anniversary year and we were the very first heritage railway in the whole world to be built by enthusiasts.

"Coincidentally, our "siblings" on the other side of the world, the Ocean Beach Railway in Dunedin, New Zealand, which was the second such railway to open in 1963, will reopen this month after a closure of more than three years caused by the theft of valuable antique parts from their steam locomotives three years ago -- so we will be raising a toast to them!

"However, we have been able to complete and undertake a number of projects and hope that we will be able to operate trains again in 2021."

Loss of revenue or the operating company LCLR Ltd from passenger fares in what was anticipated would be a record year, and the loss of donations to its charitable trust LCLR Historic Vehicles Trust is having serious consequences.

"We have so far carried one passenger this year-- a manager from East Midlands Railway with whom we were discussing ways of promoting each other's railways -- and we gave him a free ride," said Chris.

"Our charitable trust has received an emergency payment of £10,000 from the Lottery's Heritage Fund to enable us to improve hygiene facilities for our volunteers, some of whom fall into 'vulnerable' categories.

"This is being used to install water, power, sewage and washing facilities in a large Portacaabin donated by Siemens Traincare Ltd (may not sound exciting, but it is a significant advance for us and for our ability to attract volunteers) - work on this is progressing well at the moment.

"We are also erecting a new station building at our Walls Lane terminus in the Skegness Water Leisure Park. It will provide us with a new ticket office and shop, storage and hygiene facilities.

"It is loosely modelled on the station building at Woolley on the long-defunct Ashover Light Railway in Derbyshire. The existing waiting room is also being modelled - it was once used by people waiting for the train to Ashover or Clay Cross around 1925 to about 1936. We have two carriages from that railway - one in service and the other undergoing restoration stripping off 95 years' worth of paint.

"Restoration of three of our vintage carriages is also under way -- the second of the huge Ashover carriages has seen woodwork repaired and replaced, new doors installed, guard's compartment created, bogies and brakes overhauled, old paint stripped down and repainted; an old Liverpool tram seat overhauled, some new ones cast and new moquette coverings to be attached.

"The moquette has been acquired from the Vintage Carriages Trust and is of a pattern used on Metropolitan line trains on the London Underground.

"The only carriage built for the Sand Hutton Railway in Yorkshire (which ran for only a few years, from about 1923) is having its condition stabilised by one or two volunteers with a special interest in it. It was restored at Humberston in the 1970s and was used extensively there until closure of the site in 1985.

"There is also the only carriage ever built for the Nocton Estates Railway which was used by shooting parties on the 23-mile system which ran between Bardney and Nocton. That work is now under way by one of our volunteers who has been part of the LCLR for 60 years.

"Our steam engine Jurassic has been "winterised" for storage (water in pipes in frosty weather is not a good idea) so that in 2021 she will be ready for her annual boiler examination (a legal requirement) and then should be ready for service in whatever format we can operate next summer.

"There have been two significant advances with our historic diesel locomotives:

"'Nocton', built by Motor Rail Ltd of Bedford as one of their "Simplex" designs for the trench railways of World War One battlefields, has had its very faulty (original) radiator repaired. It was a long and difficult job, not only to remove the rusted and blocked tubes replaced, but also other faults attended to. She is now running again and took part in our 60th anniversary cavalcade in late summer (which you covered most generously).

"A 25-year project to restore the 'Skeg Simplex' has been completed - a truly remarkable achievement of putting back into working order, a loco built in 1947, which was originally used by a Mablethorpe firm of contractors on work to improve the sea defences in the resort.

"When they were overwhelmed by the East Coast floods of 1953 with terrible loss of life in Mablethorpe and Sutton, the loco was extracted from the sands, flushed out the salt water, sand, seashells and debris -- and put back to work.

"Work has also been carried out to connect the signals to the points and ground frames to operate points and signals using equipment which we had used at Humberston in the 1960s but which originally came from railways in Lincolnshire and elsewhere in the late 1800s/early 1900s."

*Anyone wishing to give a donations can send a cheque made payable to "LCLR Historic Vehicles Trust" to LCLR Historic Vehicles Trust, SWLP, Walls Land, Ingoldmells PE25 1JF. As we're a registered charity, those donations can be gift aided by payers of income tax - a note confirming that with name and address will suffice.