FOXFIELD BANK

Max. gradient: 1-in-19

For those who like their locomotives with more than four driving wheels, and a ‘ferret and dartboard’ on the tender, it’s perhaps easy to overlook the Foxfield Railway. After all, it only operates so-called ‘industrial locomotives’ and it’s only 3½ miles long. But there are very few places where you can hear a locomotive being worked as hard: full forward gear and the regulator wide open. The colliery branch, from the line’s Dilhorne Park terminus down to the colliery that gives the railway its name, is 1-in-19, making it the steepest adhesionworked railway in Britain today.

LES NIXON Richard Foster’s Foxfield-inspired colliery layout plan from MR126 (January 2009). Layout idea They might be small, but the Foxfield Railway’s extensive fleet of industrial locomotives can still put on a hugely impressive display on the 1-in-19 climb...