Leighton Buzzard Railway

Back towards the end of summer, I made my first visit to the Leighton Buzzard Railway.

Based around the town of Leighton Buzzard, North of London in the county of Bedfordshire.
This is one of the last surviving 2ft railways that was built in Britain for industrial use.

The Day

I travelled on one of the railways busier days at the end of August. Timetables vary depending on season, so check before you travel to the railway.

The railways starts its journey at Pages Park. This is just outside the town of Leighton Buzzard, directions to the railway can be found here.

Sufficient funds have been raised to redevelop the station here so it will be interesting to see how this takes shape during 2016. Pages Park is where the locomotives are stored, and where the carriages are kept, the railway runs down around the town and makes its way to Stonehenge Works.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At this station I found some old locomotives, and a presentation of what used to happen back when the railway was first built.  The railway was used for carrying sand from Stonehenge Works to Pages Park, so this presentation gave a great insight into what happened.

There was a demontration here of loading up the sand into the trucks. (You can see this in action on the Video associated with this blog post) The weather had also taken a turn for the worse!

The railway owns a Baldwin locomotive, like the one that the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway is looking to restore.

 

 

 

Back at Pages Park, the sheds were open to look in, there were a locomotive being restored, and other repair works being taken on, it was a great insight into what goes on behind closed doors.

 

The last picture above was where I videoed the last train of the day departing, in the picture before you can see The fireman walking up the line, dropping sand on the tracks. This is because this part of the line is one of the steepest parts of the line, and it was also a wet day and the sand help stop the train from slipping.

Thanks for reading my visit to the Leighton Buzzard Railway, the video for this will be uploaded soon.

• Visit the Leighton Buzzard Railway Website
  For more information
• View other Leighton Buzzard Posts
  Here on the RailAdvent Website