Bluebell’s 60th anniversary year to be ‘busiest-ever’

THE Bluebell Railway is set to run its most intensive-ever timetable during its August 7-9 Steaming Through 60 weekend of celebrations, to mark 60 years of operation.

Robert Hayward, chairman of the line’s diamond anniversary steering group, said: “There will be six trains operating on each of the three days so that during the middle of the day, three services will run between Sheffield Park and Horsted Keynes and three services will take passengers between East Grinstead and Horsted Keynes.

“There will be a train every 40 minutes from every station on the line. Now that’s something the founders of the Bluebell Railway could only ever have dreamed about when the first trains ran on the reopened line in 1960 and it’s certainly far more than before the line was closed by British Railways in 1958.”

The draft timetable has the first train to leave Sheffield Park at 8.10am each day and the first train from East Grinstead at 9.10am. The timetables will be slightly different on each of the three days but there will be at least 12 hours of operation on the Friday and Saturday.

All trains will stop at Horsted Keynes on Sunday afternoon for the spectacle of a cavalcade of operational steam locomotives as the climax of the event.

Special commemorative headboards will be carried by each of the steam locomotives in use.

➜ Further details will be announced at www.bluebell-railway.com/ steaming-through-60