Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway (LCLR) in Skegness is to run special services for football and rugby on four weekends in April and May.
Skegness Butlins expects thousands of people to visit the town for the ESF 2024 Youth Football Festivals and the Rhinos Challenge Rugby League Festivals.
Matches will be played in the nearby Skegness Water Leisure Park, where the LCLR's Walls Lane station is located.
The extra services will run on the weekends of 20/21 April, 4/5 May, 11/12 May and 18/19 May.
Players, supporters, families and members of the public will be able to travel on the trains, which will be operated by heritage diesel locomotives hauling restored carriages from the War Department Light Railways, the Ashover Light Railway and the Nocton Estates Railway.
Fares will be the same as in 2022 – £2 return and £5 for a family ticket (two adults and up to three children aged 3–15). Under-3s and dogs travel free; children under 16 must be accompanied by a responsible adult.
The Water Leisure Park will be open as usual when the games are played.
The Railway also plans to run freight trains to help with the building of a new station and interpretation centre at its South Loop terminus.
This development is being funded by a £24,250 grant from the government's Levelling Up programme and match funding of £8,000 from Ellis. Bros. Ltd, which owns the Skegness Water Leisure Park,
Record rainfall over the winter has made it impossible for road vehicles to carry construction material, including cement, aggregates, posts and fittings, to the site.
The LCLR's railway and rolling stock were built by the British Army in World War One to transport soldiers, weapons, food and supplies across the muddy quagmires of battlefields in France, it is well suited to transport building materials to the new station's site.
At the Railway's headquarters, supplies will be transferred into wagons which first saw service on the military railways, which will then be hauled to the construction site for contractors to work on the new platform and facilities.
The football and freight trains are the latest in a long line of events and services host by the award-winning light railway, which is around a mile long, with two-foot gauge tracks using rolling stock up to 120 years old.
In April 2017, the LCLR operated a Royal Train for Princess Anne, who experienced the restoration of historic railway vehicles from the trench railways of the World War One battlefields. She also viewed the Railway's collection of English narrow-gauge railway vehicles and met volunteers.
LCLR's services usually run from 10:30 to 15:30 on the following dates in 2024:
- Saturdays 20 April; 4, 11, 18 May, 15 June (Special Diesel Day, details to be announced soon ); 13, 20, 27 July; 3, 10, 17, 24, 31 August; 7, 21 September (World War One Day, details to be announced soon); 26 October
- Sundays 21 April; 5, 12, 19, 26 May
- Mondays 5, 12, 19, 26th August
- Wednesdays 10, 24, 31 July; 7, 14, 21, 28 August.
- Additional services may also operate for Skegness schools.
More information is available on the Railway's website.
“When the railway opened at the original site in Humberston near Cleethorpes in August 1960, as the first heritage railway in the world to be built by enthusiasts, no-one could have foreseen its present extraordinary achievements which have followed its reopening in the Skegness Water Leisure Park in 2009. A Royal train and now, special services for the ESF 2024 Youth Football Festival and the Rhinos Challenge Ruby League Festival – football specials in railway-speak – and freight services – all on a line around a mile long, run entirely by dedicated volunteers.
“I just hope the guard's right-away whistle to the driver doesn't get mistaken for the referee giving offside!”
Railway spokesperson John Chappell
