Trains run again on the Thorney Railway

I took this picture yesterday, 5 Jan 2013 (Thanks to Tom Rayner for blowing it up in Photoshop - the original is posted at the bottom of this blog). I was working in the garden and when I looked up there was a steam engine sitting on the embankment two fields away.

It was on the back of a low-loader transporter lorry parked up in a lay-by on the A47 Thorney bypass. What struck me as interesting was that the bypass at this point is built partly on the trackbed/route of the old Midland and Great Northern (M+GN) railway line which ran from Birmingham to Cromer and was closed by British Rail in 1963.

When we came to Thorney in about 1979, the railway track was removed, but large parts of the line were still clearly visible and a good chunk of the railway was walkable. It was a favourite walk with Jack, our collie-cross.

This engine is a J15 0-6-0 and has been given its old number of 7564, but was British Rail engine 65462. It's owned now by the North Norfolk Railway and runs on the line between Sheringham and Weybourne, which is remaining track from the old M+GN line.

So here it was, 50 years after Beeching's report brought about the closure of the railway, parked up within feet of the track it would once have steamed along, taking holidaymakers to the Norfolk coast and farm produce back to the city.

The M+GN line never made money. It was christened Muddle and Get Nowhere by people who used it regularly and the Crab and Winkle line by holidaymakers who perhaps had a better "user experience".

You can read a bit more about the engine here:

The J15 is the M+GN Joint Railway Society's "other" ex-BR steam locomotive.  Built by the Great Eastern Railway at Stratford in 1912, it was numbered 564.  A total of 189 were built for light to medium goods trains, but it was not  uncommon to see a J15 on a local passenger working. 65462 spent most of its  life in East Anglia, and was often found working on the "Waveney Valley" line,  between Tivetshall and Beccles in Suffolk. 65462 was purchased in 1963 along with B12 61572 by the Society, and  went into storage at March before being moved in 1966 to the North Norfolk  Railway. The engine first returned to steam in 1977, and worked for many years  between Sheringham and Weybourne. The J15 also hauled the first train from  Weybourne to Holt, when the line was reopened in 1989. It was withdrawn  from service shortly after. The J15 returned to steam in 2002 after a 12 year restoration, and completed  the "Steam Dream", when the B12 and J15 ran together for the first time in  preservation on 30th August 2002.