From Royal train to football specials and freight – it’s all aboard the Lincolnshire Light Railway

The award-winning mile-long Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway is using its rolling stock to transport materials across the muddy site to build a new station and interpretation centre at its South Loop terminus.

This is being made possible by a £24,250 grant from the Government’s Levelling Up programme and match funding of £8,000 from the railway’s hosts and owners of the Skegness Water Leisure Park where it is based, Ellis. Bros. Ltd.

Record amounts of rainfall over the winter have made it impossible for road vehicles to convey construction material – cement, aggregates, posts and fittings etc – to the site.

So, as the railway and its rolling stock was first constructed by the British Army in World War to transport soldiers, weapons, food and supplies across the otherwise impassable muddy quagmires of the battlefields in France, the same solution has been devised to transport everything to the site to build the new station.

Supplies will be transferred at the railway’s headquarters into wagons which first saw service on those military railways, then moved to the construction site for contractors to work on the new platform and facilities.

Railway spokesman John Chappell said: “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!”

The ESF 2024 Youth Football Festivals and the Rhinos Challenge Rugby League Festivals will bring an influx of visitors vitally needed by the volunteers, whose work hit our headlines during the Coronation Big Help and is featured in our video.

Competitors and their families taking advantage of the football specials will get the opportunity to ride carriages that in April 2017 were used for a Royal Train for HRH The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, to experience the restoration of historic railway vehicles from the trench railways of the World War One battlefields.

The games will be played on Skegness Water Leisure Park.

Extra trains will run for supporters, participants and their families and the railway will remain open to members of the public.

The first football specials are on the timetable for Saturday and Sunday, April 20 and 21; Saturday and Sunday, May 4 abd 5; Saturday and Sunday, May 11 and 12; and Saturday and Sunday, May 18 and 19.

Full details of the ESF 2024 Youth Football Festival (April 19 – April 22) and May 3 - 6) can be found at footballfestivals.co.uk/junior-football-tournaments.

Full details of The Rhinos Challenge ‘The Ultimate Rugby League Tour’ (May 10 - 13 and May 17 - 20 May) can be found at:

rhinoschallenge.co.uk/junior-rugby-league-tours

Fares will remain unchanged from 2022 – just £2 return and £5 for a family ticket.

For more information about the LCLR’s website visit www.lclr.co.uk