The Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway in Skegness Water Leisure Park is set to turn the clock back to the 60s as a nostalgic locomotive returns to the line following restoration efforts.

The heritage line first operated on 27 August 1960, when enthusiasts ran the purpose-built heritage light railway from North Sea Lane to Beach station at Humberston, near Cleethorpes.

Hauling the pioneering trains was a Simplex diesel locomotive, officially built in 1926 by Motor Rail Ltd of Bedford, although believed to date from 1918 and the First World War. Its bodywork was fitted by a sheet metal firm on Grimsby Docks and painted in a fishing-vessel colour scheme.

During its first three weeks in service, the locomotive carried 8,000 passengers, rising to 60,000 in the full 1961 season. Later displaced by newer Simplex engines and the steam locomotive Jurassic, it lost its original livery, gained glazed windows against the North Sea weather and eventually carried the nameplate ‘Paul’. 

“It brought tears to my eyes to see it back running in the original colour, after all these years. There are still active volunteers on our railway who remember it – and drove it – in that colour back in the early 1960s”.

Richard Shepherd, Chairman of the LCLR’s Historic Vehicles Trust