‘Heritage is the razzmatazz’: Great Central Railway plans to revive Victorian train route

Andy Lowe has been at the Great Central Railway since volunteers took over the closed line in 1969.

“That was the year I left school. So as a teenager, I got involved at the beginning. There was not a great deal here,” he said. “No locomotives or carriages, just derelict buildings in need of attention.” It took another four years before the first train ran on the heritage line.

But more than 50 years later, work is under way to reunify two parts of the last Victorian mainline railway to be built, split by the Beeching cuts of the 1960s.

Planning permission is being sought and funds are being raised to draw up engineering plans to reconnect the Loughborough to Leicester line with another section running north to Nottingham.

In blazing sunshine at Loughborough Central station, Lowe is giving a tour of the locomotive shed which sits on the line that will, if plans go ahead, run once again to Robin Hood country.

“We sort of market ourselves with this mainline image,” he says proudly, “and all the other heritage railways are more of a branch- line nature”.

He says the railway is also used for training and testing by companies operating on the national network. He adds: “The heritage is the razzmatazz that everyone knows about. But in the background, you’ve got this servicing the modern railway as well.”

Lowe is one of more than 700 volunteers on the railway, some of whom are stoking up engines, cleaning boilers and oiling pistons, working alongside staff engineers and apprentices, preparing for a 1966-themed gala event the next day.

Last year’s celebration was set in 1963, featuring re-enactors holding protests against Dr Richard Beeching, designer of the “Beeching axe” that closed thousands of miles of railway lines in the 1960s, including the Great Central.

The railway emerges from the other side of the shed stopping at one of three bridges built or restored as part of the re-unification plans.

Looking from the north end of the first bridge, spanning the Grand Union Canal, Lowe points out the 400-metre gap to the next bridge, crossing the mainline. Beyond that, a third bridge crosses the A60 and the line then joins by a spur to the national network.

“Not only will it give us a much longer railway and take us to the outskirts of Nottingham, but it will link us into Network Rail,” Lowe says. “It will certainly help with the mainline testing that we do, and it will open up the possibility of specials, say a train from St Pancras for instance, coming as a tourist thing.”

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With the planning application in, the heritage railway is hoping to raise £500,000 for detailed engineering designs, having already spent £7m on the project.

Back at Loughborough Central, stylishly smocked up, the 1.20 to Leicester North is running behind schedule, its driver for the day – which happens to be your correspondent – having spent too long looking in the signal box.

On the footplate, the driver Les Skinner, who at 68 is two years younger than the locomotive, is showing me the reverser, the brakes, the regulator and, most importantly, the chain for the extremely loud whistle. Skinner explains these in detail, comparing them with the gearbox and pedals in a car.

Unfortunately, this is no use to a non-driver. But under Skinner’s supervision, I can skip the traditional steps to being a train driver. John Clark, 49, is our fireman, shovelling coal into the firebox.

After a sharp blow on the whistle, I pull the regulator back, a long handle linked to a rod running down the side of the engine, controlling the flow of steam into the cylinders, and we set off up the line.

Skinner provides a commentary of the countryside we speed through: plans for housing, the wildlife of a reservoir we cross and the virtues of heritage railways compared with the golf course.

From the cab, I can see little of the rods and spinning wheels I control, but I can feel them vibrating and clanking underneath. I successfully apply the brakes to stop at the two intervening stations, one maintained in the gas-lit style of the 1910s, the other the 1940s. The steam brake spits and drips as it holds the train in place against the gradient.

Each departure requires the whistle to be blown, as does passing a wedding venue. At one point, my use of the whistle was not long enough, so another longer whistle is needed.

At 1960s-themed Leicester North, the engine is taken to the other end of the carriages. I take us backwards to 1950s Loughborough, the reverser appropriately set, and put my head out the window into the coal dust blowing off the tender, surrounded by the smells and sounds of an experience like none other.