The Somerset and Dorset Heritage Railway is pleased to announce that steam hauled passenger services will be returning to Midsomer Norton for the fifty year closure commemorative event on the weekend of 5th/6th March.
A London Midland and Scottish Railway Jinty Tank locomotive will be visiting the line where its former class members worked many years before. This will coincide with the resumption of public running after a lay-off of passenger services over the previous two years.
It is hoped that the unique Sentinel locomotive, currently nearing the end of an extensive rebuild on site at the station, will be steaming too. Two of these squat Sentinel engines were built for the Somerset and Dorset Railway in 1929 and based at Radstock until the late 1950s, marshalling coal wagons from the collieries through the diminutive Tyning Arch Bridge, known colloquially as ‘Marble Arch’.
There is now more than half a mile of rail running line at Midsomer Norton on the former Somerset and Dorset Railway and the Duchy of Cornwall has just given the go-ahead for access to its section of the railway land. This is an informal notification, ahead of getting the official ‘entry letter’, to allow work to start clearing trackbed surface vegetation ahead of the bird nesting season. Volunteers are always needed at the station for a number of activities, but now there is big clearance and track laying to be done. Please come and help, you will be made very welcome!
Other activities for the Commemorative weekend will be going on in the gardens, museums and shop, so look out for further details via: www.sdjr.co.uk
In this, the fiftieth year since closure of the railway by British Rail, the Heritage Trust is encouraging enthusiasts of the Somerset and Dorset to purchase shares by standing order to help fund development of this much loved railway. By subscribing, either by a one-off payment or by instalments, there is the opportunity to be a part of the history of the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway.