LINES WE LOVE
Your guide to one of East Anglia’s premier preserved railways: both a classic holiday line, and a step back in time.
The North Norfolk Railway – a seaside favourite.
It’s been described in Steam Railway as ‘the finest view in England’, and you can see why. A vista of rolling fields, a church tower pinpointing the pretty village in the distance, and a 171-year-old windmill nearby. Beyond is the expanse of blue sea, and the coastline stretching away towards Blakeney Point. Just to sit and gaze down upon Weybourne, from the hills above it and Sheringham, is to relax and feel at one with nature.
The brisk pant of a steam locomotive breaks the silence as a train rolls serenely across the scene. It might be a graceful Apple green express passenger locomotive with 1920s teak carriages; an archaiclooking, tall-chimneyed machine, elegantly attired in Great Eastern Railway Royal blue, with even more venerable stock; or a workaday black freight or mixed traffic engine with British Railways maroon or crimson vehicles. But whatever it is, it perfectly complements this idyllic and almost timeless scene.
After BR axed almost the whole of East Anglia’s Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway system in one fell swoop in 1959, the resulting preservation group initially hoped to save as much of it as possible, and considered several other lengthy stretches of the network. Arguably, however, they got the best bit of it: the five miles from Sheringham to Holt on what is now the
North Norfolk Railway.
Along the line
It’s a pleasure to travel in either direction, but we’ll describe the journey from the western end of the NNR at Holt, with the destination the resort of Sheringham – following in the footsteps of generations of holidaymakers who packed into excursion trains heading this way in the 1950s.
It is not the original Holt station, for that part of the trackbed was used to construct a bypass around the town after the line closed, but on this greenfield site, the NNR has recreated a typical Norfolk country station of circa 1936. The platforms are in an unusual staggered layout found at several other locations in the county, while the main building is a genuine Midland & Great Northern structure relocated from Stalham on the Melton ConstableGreat Yarmouth line. The goods shed is a replica of the M&GN example at Thursford, and houses the ‘William Marriott Museum’, telling the story of the M&GN system and named after its engineer and locomotive superintendent.
Perhaps the most interesting attraction here, though, is the ‘Railway Cottage’ – a grounded carriage body that, rather than being put back on its wheels and returned to passenger service, has been restored as a typical 1930s dwelling in a project supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Departing from Holt, the line initially runs north before curving towards the east across the scrubland of Kelling Heath. As the train crests the summit
and begins to roll downhill towards Weybourne, that ‘finest view in England’ opens up before you; for many of those holidaymakers in the 1950s, this would have been their first ever view of the sea.
For anyone who thinks of Norfolk as being flat, the NNR proves otherwise. Here, and on the other side of Weybourne, the train is coasting down a sharp 1-in-80 gradient, which gives even the NNR’s biggest engines some work to do on the return journey.
Just before Weybourne comes the tiny Kelling Heath Park halt, serving a network of footpaths through the woods and heathland from where you can enjoy the view – or head back up the hill to the summit, where a foot crossing provides a good photographic shot. It is a request stop only – and
the steep gradient means that only trains heading downhill towards Sheringham will normally stop – but Weybourne is just half a mile away, and the same network of paths can also be accessed from there.
Weybourne is a gem of preservation – still possessing its original station building, and with the signal box relocated from the original Holt station – all beautifully restored in the M&GN’s tan and cream livery to reflect the early 1900s period. It is also home to the locomotive shed and engineering works, including the NNR Engineering boiler restoration business; although the yard is not open to the public, it can be viewed from the footpath onto Weybourne Heath, which also leads to one of the best photographic spots – looking down across the fields at that ‘finest view in England’, with Weybourne and its windmill in the background, and with the trains climbing another 1-in-80 bank into the station. In season, these fields are often ablaze with the poppies that give the NNR its marketing name of ‘The Poppy Line’.
Heading down that bank away from Weybourne, the line crosses over the A149 road, then runs between it and Sheringham golf course as it approaches the town, with the sea visible over the cliffs to the left. Finally, the train pulls into Sheringham – an expansive, three-platform affair with an attractive, glass-roofed canopy, restored to reflect its 1950s heyday, and set to be improved even further with the reconstruction of the canopy on Platform 2.
For most trains, this is the end of the journey, but it’s not exactly the end of the line. The track continues past the East signal box and across Station Road – the level crossing having been reinstated in 2010 to re-link the NNR to the national network – allowing dining trains to run over Network Rail metals to Cromer on a few selected dates each year.
Unique experiences
Like many preserved lines, the NNR has restored its stations to represent different time periods, offering a ‘journey’ through railway history. But so
does its superb collection of locomotives and rolling stock, most of which represents the steam era in this part of the country and the wider Eastern Region.
There’s the line’s flagship engines, London & North Eastern Railway ‘B12’ No. 8572 and Great Eastern Railway ‘Y14’ No. 564, the last survivors of classes that worked respectively out of Liverpool Street on express trains, and on East Anglian country branch lines. There’s the BR Standard Class 4, No. 76084, a descendant of the Ivatt ‘Flying Pigs’ that were the mainstay of the M&GN system in the 1950s; ‘N2’ No. 1744, a veteran of
King’s Cross commuter trains; and Wissington, an industrial saddle tank that spent its working life hauling East Anglia’s sugar beet crop. But it’s not just the locomotives – it’s the carriages that are the real attraction.
Only here can you experience the journey of a 1920s and 1930s London commuter, with a ride in the unique surviving ‘Quad-Art’ coaches – designed for suburban trains from King’s Cross, and beautifully restored from rotten, seemingly hopeless wrecks. Later this year, they should even be paired once again with one of the very locomotives that hauled them from ‘the Cross’
– No. 1744, which is being overhauled to main line standard for use on the Cromer dining trains. The NNR has also complemented the ‘Quad-Arts’ by restoring a set of the later BR Mk 1 suburban coaches – which are now rare on preserved lines, many having sadly been scrapped because of extensive corrosion.
Another unique experience to be savoured is riding in – or on the balcony of – the Wisbech & Upwell Tramway coach, the sister to the one that found fame in the 1952 Ealing comedy film The Titfield Thunderbolt. It’s even been fitted out with a replica of the bar in the latter vehicle, so you can prop it up, order a drink and pretend to be Stanley Holloway. It forms part of the NNR’s vintage train, which also includes the only working M&GN carriage and a recently restored Great Eastern fourwheeler of 1899, and gives a real flavour of East Anglian branch line travel as it used to be.
Even the standard set of 1950s BR Mk 1 coaches normally used for service trains has its own extra dash of character, with the inclusion of a 1937 Gresley buffet car – and in the fullness of time, more LNER-design vehicles will join the latter to create yet another typical East Anglian train.
Perfectly formed
Not all of these will be running on a normal day, of course, but if you visit during special events – certainly during the annual steam galas – you should have ample opportunity to sample them all. This is when the NNR turns its relatively short length to its advantage, getting all these treasured toys out of the box to run an intensive service of trains up and down with the ‘right’ locomotives hauling the ‘right’ stock.
What the NNR lacks in length, it more than makes up for not just with its scenery, but its variety, and the quality of the historical experience that it offers. It is well worth the journey to East Anglia.