60 Freight only

Like the juxtaposition of freight locomotives against rural scenery? RICHARD FOSTER presents all the inspiration you’ll need for the perfect layout formula.

In a classic example of art imitating life, a new real life freight service prompted Peter Marriott to bring an old layout out of retirement.

he sleepy rural branch line that handles only a couple of trains a day seems confined to a previous era, the version of Britain encapsulated in The Titfield Thunderbolt, and not the cut and thrust of today’s internet age. Britain’s current railway renaissance, in which passenger numbers climb year on year, seems to have given

Tpretty much every stretch of the network an intensive timetable. But there are lines that retain the atmosphere of the sleepy backwater of old. These are the freight-only lines that serve industry or utilities. Some freight lines have only ever served the industry that keeps them employed. Others are former through-routes, closed by Beeching and his successors, and now truncated as far as the industrial site. In some cases, these branches were once main lines, homes of the crack expresses that linked Britain’s major cities. There are many miles of railway that only host freight trains and it would be impossible to cover all of them in one article. But here’s a selection of some of the most inspirational:

RON WESTWATER Golant is one of the prettiest railway locations in Britain, but it only hosts china clay trains from the port on the Fowey estuary to the main line at Lostwithiel and on to nearby quarries. This line originally continued beyond Fowey,...

DAVID BAGNALL This viaduct formed part of the GWR’S route from Madeley Junction, on the Wolverhamptonshrewsbury main line, to Buildwas and beyond into mid-wales. It might look unassuming but it skirted round Abraham Darby’s blast furnace, the first in Britain to be...