Day trip to Lowestoft

[Redkiterail]

Day trip to Lowestoft 

[cnw6847]

Excellent photos.

 

I see new tracks are being laid in Lowestoft.

Shame the iron bridge was taken down a few years ago as it offered a great view 

[Andy Louch]

Yes, a nice selection of photos of an area I am unfamiliar with. Looks like the semaphores don't have much longer to go?

[south_tyne]

Great photos, thanks very much for sharing.

 

I had a spell living and working in Suffolk a few years ago, my local station was Wickham Market, and was a regular traveller on the East Suffolk line and often found myself going up to Lowestoft both for work and pleasure. I found it a fascinating railway location and also really like the town itself, it is such an interesting place with so much character.

 

Pleased to see the semaphores still in situ, although given the ongoing signalling work and restructuring in Suffolk and Norfolk I would imagine they won't be there for much longer. 

 

Thanks again for sharing and hope you enjoyed the trip to sunny Suffolk!

 

David

 

[tetsudofan]

Great pics, I'll be off to Lowestoft via Norwich on May 11 travelling on the Hastings Diesel unit - got an email from Hastings Diesels last night confirming that I have a seat on the train.

 

My Grandfather was a fitter at Lowestoft Shed (32C) and his house was the last but one on Denmark Road overlooking the run-in to Lowestoft Central. Used to spend summer holidays in the late 1950s/early 1960s with the grandparents spending quite a bit of time watching the trains from the upstairs bedroom window. Have to blame Grandad for my interest in Trains.

 

Can also remember the trips we took on the first DMUs (79xxx numbers) out to Somerleyton and back to Lowestoft. Quite often we were lucky grabbing seats behind the driver. Never did I think that many years later I would be returning to Lowestoft on a Hastings Diesel.

 

Remember the Iron Bridge and crossed it many times to get up to the sea front when you were allowed to walk along the harbour and across the gate on the dry dock. If we wanted an ice cream on the way we would instead walk along the back streets and get a softie from Capoldies.

 

Just round the corner from my Grandparents was Laundry Lane and the Eastern Coach Works. Every Friday would see a line of new buses heading off the their new owners. Dad did an apprenticeship at ECW in the 1930s but couldn't get a job upon completion so went off to London and became a policeman.

 

I was banished to Lowestoft at the age of four to spend a few months there with the  grandparents and returned home to find that I had a new baby brother. Am also told that I returned home with a Suffolk accent but it did last long when I got back to London.

[trapoint]

The semaphores were due to go a couple of weeks ago but most of the project has been delayed by almost a year as you will soon read in the railway press . Reedham junction signal box recently closed and the line to Yarmouth via Berney Arms will stayed closed until next year !

  Some work has been done at Brundall but the big one at Lowestoft that will see the demise of all the steam age track layout and semaphores  will  have to wait until the winter.

[Reorte]

The area was on my list of "would like to go to some day" - all those semaphores, and loco-hauled trains but it sounds like I'm already too late for some of it. Guess that's what happens if you just throw things on the "some day" pile.

[Legend]

Great pics . My family used to holiday in Great Yarmouth / Lowestoft /Gorleston and the Oulton Broads . I think they stayed in a camp site called Cherry Tree Farm . We were there every year from 65-68. Quite a journey in a dilapidated minibus from Glasgow in the days before motorways . A74,A69,A1 Newark, Kings Lynn , Great Yarmouth .  Anyway, have great memories of Lowestoft .  Brown and Cream buses, the swing bridge at the harbor , the miniature railway that ran in a circle round the putting green   and vague memories of green dmus and maroon coaches in the station . At a very young age I had the railway bug.  The last time I was there (to see what it was like)was 1985, caught the train from Liverpool Street . What an experience on the dense traffic out of the station. Up to Ipswich on 47 and Mk2 air cons  then change there onto a Met Camm dmu to Lowestoft .  Happy days . I understand like a lot of British Towns Lowestoft is now a shadow of its former self, but I would like to go back and see one day.

[woodenhead]

Last time I went to Lowestoft class 03s were still stationed there.

 

[Andy Louch]

7 hours ago, trapoint said:

The semaphores were due to go a couple of weeks ago but most of the project has been delayed by almost a year as you will soon read in the railway press . Reedham junction signal box recently closed and the line to Yarmouth via Berney Arms will stayed closed until next year !

  Some work has been done at Brundall but the big one at Lowestoft that will see the demise of all the steam age track layout and semaphores  will  have to wait until the winter.

 

Many thanks for info; will try and sneak in a quick trip during the summer! Seeing remnants of the 'steam age' in terms of infrastructure is becoming increasingly challenging!!

[big jim]

I’ve only been to Lowestoft 3 times, however all 3 occasions I’ve been lucky enough to be driving class 37s to and from there, once via the ‘wherry line’ to Norwich and twice via the east Suffolk line via saxmunden

 

the thing I found fascinating was I wholly expected the line to be billiard table flat from Ipswich to Lowestoft, how wrong I was! An absolute fascinating line and up and down all the way, the line via brundall was exactly how I expected it to be an dit was nice to drive over landmarks such as the swing bridge at reedham after seeing pics of it for many years

 

shame I’ll probably not see it again, but who knows, never say never! 

 

Some of my pics

 

lowestoft, note the detection bars on the track 

 

 

beccles

 

gt yarmouth

 

norwich

[south_tyne]

15 hours ago, trapoint said:

The semaphores were due to go a couple of weeks ago but most of the project has been delayed by almost a year as you will soon read in the railway press . Reedham junction signal box recently closed and the line to Yarmouth via Berney Arms will stayed closed until next year !

  Some work has been done at Brundall but the big one at Lowestoft that will see the demise of all the steam age track layout and semaphores  will  have to wait until the winter.

 

Thanks that is really interesting. From a very selfish point of view, I am pleased about that delay! I will be down in Norfolk and Suffolk to visit family in the summer so I am pleased I will be able to have another visit to Lowestoft before everything is swept aside.

 

The bulk of my family live in Lingwood so I have been a regular user of the station over the years, travelling backwards and forwards both to Yarmouth and Norwich. My auntie and uncle used to live adjacent to the railway on Station Road, right next to the level crossing; as you can imagine this was heaven as a lad on our visits during the summer holidays! For obvious reasons I have not used the Berney Arms route very often - I wonder how big an impact the closure is having locally? I haven't heard anything anecdotally. 

[south_tyne]

On 09/04/2019 at 18:44, tetsudofan said:

 

I was banished to Lowestoft at the age of four to spend a few months there with the  grandparents and returned home to find that I had a new baby brother. Am also told that I returned home with a Suffolk accent but it did last long when I got back to London.

 

Lovely story. Mind you can't beat a good old Suffolk accent! Sadly increasingly rare now due to the seemingly unstoppable spread of Estuary English into East Anglia 

[beast66606]

The semaphores are currently down to go in May 2020.

 

Reedham Junction has been abolished as mentioned above but additionally Cantley is now only a gate box, losing it's block status and with it the starter signals on each line.

 

Lowestoft yard has been relaid as there is - hopefully - some traffic (aggregates) returning later this year.

 

Brundall had the single line junction to Acle relaid as a plain single junction with crossover rather than a double to single junction.

 

There is talk of a shuttle service on the Reedham - Yarmouth line for the summer but I'm not convinced, however ...

[stivesnick]

On 08/04/2019 at 07:42, cnw6847 said:

Excellent photos.

 

I see new tracks are being laid in Lowestoft.

Shame the iron bridge was taken down a few years ago as it offered a great view 

 

Hopefully in a few years time, there will be a new bridge over the railway to take photos from when the new Lake Lothing Crossing is built. The bridge is around 100m from the buffer stops than the old footbridge.

 

Nick 

[Reorte]

13 hours ago, beast66606 said:

Brundall had the single line junction to Acle relaid as a plain single junction with crossover rather than a double to single junction.

 

What's the thinking behind that? Or more to the point why wasn't that layout used in the first place? It saves a diamond. The short bit of wrong line running involved?

Edited April 15, 2019 by Reorte

[beast66606]

27 minutes ago, Reorte said:

 

What's the thinking behind that? Or more to the point why wasn't that layout used in the first place? It saves a diamond. The short bit of wrong line running involved?

 

I suspect the double to single dates from the "good old days" - it's now been modernised - and possibly wrong line avoidance was the reason, hard to be sure, it was like that in the 1980s and probably earlier.

Edited April 15, 2019 by beast66606