Victorian locomotives to chug through Purbeck on 'nostalgic' weekend

The team at the Swanage Railway will be celebrating the era with two unique steam locomotives from the 1880s and the 1890s hauling the trains. 

Residents are being invited to join in with the trains running from Friday, March 22 to Sunday, March 24 by dressing in period costume. 

An intensive steam train service will operate between Norden, Corfe Castle, Harman’s Cross, Herston and Swanage. 

Past Corfe Castle (Image: Andrew PM Wright)

Trains will chug this weekend (Image: Andrew PM Wright)

The Victorian steam locomotives will be the Swanage Railway Trust’s unique London and South Western Railway T3 class No. 563 from 1893 as well as South Eastern and Chatham Railway 01 class No. 65 from 1896 which is visiting from the Bluebell Railway in West Sussex which was the country’s first preserved heritage line in 1960. 

Also hauling the trains will be 1920s Southern Railway U class steam locomotive No. 31806 and 1940s Southern Railway Bulleid Pacific West Country class steam locomotive No. 34028 ‘Eddystone’ which are based on the Swanage Railway. 

Volunteer Swanage Railway Company commercial director Robert Patterson said: “Our Victorian Weekend will be an evocative and enjoyable three-day celebration of the ambitious and pioneering era that built the Swanage Railway in the 1880s. 

“It was the drive and enterprise of the dynamic and determined Victorians that gave us the railway system that we depend on, and enjoy, today – including the Swanage Railway. 

“The ambitious Victorian builders of the Swanage Railway built an iron girder viaduct across the River Frome south of Wareham as well as a beautifully proportioned Purbeck stone four-arched viaduct at Corfe Castle and a cutting that was blasted with dynamite through the chalk of the Purbeck Hills below the castle ruins. 

“It took determined Purbeck businessmen almost 40 years of campaigning to eventually build a ten-mile branch line railway from a mile south of Wareham to Corfe Castle and Swanage in the mid-1880s – replacing the horse and cart with the faster, and cheaper, steam train. 

“Work started on building the Swanage branch line during June, 1883 – starting at both ends of the line, at Swanage and at Worgret, a mile south of Wareham on the London to Dorchester main line – with the first train running from Swanage to Wareham in May, 1885.”