The Hamworthy Freight Branch is a short

standard gauge A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in Ea ...

line from Hamworthy Station to the

Hamworthy Hamworthy is a village, parish, peninsula and suburb of Poole in Dorset, England. It is sited on a peninsula of approximately that is bordered by the town of Upton to the north, Poole Harbour to the south, Lytchett Bay to the west and Hol ...

side of

Poole Harbour Poole Harbour is a large natural harbour in Dorset, southern England, with the town of Poole on its shores. The harbour is a drowned valley (ria) formed at the end of the last ice age and is the estuary of several rivers, the largest being th ...

History

The line was originally constructed by the Southampton and Dorchester Railway in 1847 and was the terminus for Poole via a bridge over the inlet dividing Poole and Hamworthy. A new through branch via opened to a new Poole railway station in 1872 which meant that passengers had a direct service to the town, and following the opening of the causeway across

Holes Bay A hole is an opening in or through a particular medium, usually a solid body. Holes occur through natural and artificial processes, and may be useful for various purposes, or may represent a problem needing to be addressed in many fields of en ...

in 1893 allowing through trains to serve Poole, the Hamworthy Branch lost its passenger status in 1896.

Locomotives

The line was once worked, as part of the local pick up goods rounds, by a Southern Railway B4 class

0-4-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents one of the simplest possible types, that with two axles and four coupled wheels, all of which are driven. The wheels on the earliest four-coupled locomotives were ...

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

. During the late 1960s and early 1970s the line was worked by Class 03 Drewry

0-6-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles and no trailing wheels. This was the most common wheel arrangemen ...

diesel shunting locomotives numbers 03 179 and 03 083, occasionally as double headers (cab to cab) when hauling a long train of Ford transit vans on bogie

flat wagons A flatcar (US) (also flat car, or flatbed) is a piece of rolling stock that consists of an open, flat deck mounted on a pair of trucks (US) or bogies (UK), one at each end containing four or six wheels. Occasionally, flat cars designed to carry ...

or heavy girder and sheet steel rolls on bogie bolsters. Local school children at the lineside Hamworthy Middle School were quite familiar with these locomotives and could tell from a distance which was which as 03 179 was always front towards the docks and 03 083 was always cab towards the docks. The brake vans used were the standard BR type, occasionally carrying a bicycle on the rear platform, as the train would stop at the hand opened

level crossing A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, Trail, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line crossing over or under using an Overpass#Railway, overpass ...

gates in Ashmore Avenue, a man would jump down from the locomotive, open the gates and the train would proceed through. The train would stop just clear of the gates and the bicycle would be unloaded for the man to cycle back to Poole station once he had closed the gates. On occasions the reverse would happen and the man would cycle from Poole station, open the gates, the train would pass through returning to Poole, stop and pick up the man plus bicycle on the brake van. A frequent brake van visitor was the ex- LSWR bogie brake van, which still had faint LSWR lettering showing under the BR red oxide wood paint. This tended to be used on heavier steel trains hauled by the double headed 03 shunters. In the late 1970s both were replaced by Class 09 0-6-0 diesel shunting locomotives. Occasional visitors were Class 47s hauling exceptional export steel train loads during the 1970s, later Class 37s became the normal visitors as steel and other freight traffic was forwarded via the branch (mostly scrap metal to the electric arc furnaces in

Cardiff Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingd ...

). As of 2010 the line is home to no

locomotive A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the Power (physics), motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, Motor coach (rail), motor ...

s. The Poole Harbour Company kept a 0-4-0 shunter for use on the line, but in 2011 the loco was scrapped.

Current use

The branch remained connected to the mainline network for many years, but has since been cut off by the partial removal of the points at Hamworthy. Semi-permanent fences and barriers have been erected across the line near each of the level crossings in the port area. The first stone train to run in five years along the line arrived in Hamworthy on the 25 January 2017. A regular weekly service had been restored, but has since stopped.

History

Locomotives

Current use

References

External links