TrainS TO nOrTh Elmham in 2020 FOr mid-nOrFOlk’S 25Th annivErSary

Passenger trains are planned to return to North Elmham next year, to mark the Mid-Norfolk Railway’s 25th anniversary.

In use for freight traffic until 1989, the station is the northern railhead of the MNR’s 16-mile line from Wymondham. Passenger trains currently run as far as Worthing Crossing, less than a mile to the south – but works trains have reached North Elmham level crossing, and the track has been upgraded with new sleepers to within approximately 600 yards of the station.

The MNR needs to raise an estimated £40,000-50,000 to return the level crossing to operation, said general manager George Saville: “The track is still in place over the crossing – but the biggest problem is that nobody’s sure what condition it’s in underneath the road surface.”

The 1936-built LNER station building survives (albeit heavily modified) but is in private ownership, so the railway will build its own platform – although this will not be completed by next year.

Said Mr Saville: “We’re thinking in terms of a Great Eastern-style halt, and we’re working out a new track plan to make sure that what we renew is to that plan.

“Then we’ll focus on getting back to County School,” he added, referring to the restored station to the north, to which another 1½ miles of track needs to be re-laid.

County School was home to one of the previous preservation schemes for the line, Great Eastern Railway Company (1989) Ltd, but the railway is celebrating its anniversary next year because, says Mr Saville, “1995 was the year that the MNR became a cohesive entity.” It ran its first trains between Dereham and Yaxham in 1997.

MikE ESaU North Elmham was best known among enthusiasts in Br days for its daily milk and parcels train, often worked by the last surviving GEr ‘J15’ 0-6-0s. in this scene, thought to date from 1960, No. 65471 shunts the train into the dairy siding.