Swanage's Victorian station
Swanage station was awash with lace bonnets, frock coats and pocket watches today, as enthusiasts celebrated 125 years since the first steam train puffed into town.
Excited schoolchildren in Victorian costume, accompanied by music from a pair of original street organs, boarded a special train at 11.30, recreating the town’s very first service a century-and-a-quarter ago today.
The event is the centrepiece of a five-day ‘Victorian Swanage’ festival, celebrating the town’s heyday as one of Britain’s most fashionable seaside resorts more than a century ago.
Martin Payne, Swanage Railway’s commercial manager, said the railway had been a vital part of Swanage’s history: “The area was totally changed by the coming of the railway, before that Swanage was a tiny fishing and quarrying village.”
St Mark's First School reception class dressed up for the event
The reception class from St Mark’s First School were thrilled to be so close to working steam trains. Phoenix, 5, said: “I like the old trains, sometimes they have different coloured steam.” Cayla, 4½, liked ‘watching them moving their wheels’.
Further down the platform, Weymouth-based transport historian Brian Jackson was signing copies of his new book ‘Swanage – 125 years of railways’. “It’s just been published today, the culmination of years of research”, he said.
The railway’s future remains uncertain, however. It needs to raise a mammoth £3 million by a July 30th deadline to fund re-signalling work that would allow regular passenger services from the London-Weymouth mainline for the first time since 1972.
Jane and Norman Dicker came from Chichester with their 1888 Austrian reed organ.
Martin Payne was hopeful the target could be reached in time: “It’s got to happen, there are a lot of positive signs. Three millions pounds sounds like a lot of money, but it’s nothing compared to the benefit it brings. We estimate the railway already brings £7 million a year to the area, but that would be dwarfed if we had services from the mainline.
“We’re not just a museum, we’re providing a service to the community. We’re doing what the railway was originally designed to do – bring people down to the beach!”
Victorian Swanage continues until Sunday 23rd May.
