St. Judes Bay

SOUTHERN REGION BRANCH LINE

The layout represents a Southern Region branch line terminus set in the late 1950’s to the early 1960’s and is situated in a typical seaside resort on the Devon and Cornwall coast. This area was Known as the Southern’s ‘Withered Arm’ by railway enthusiasts.

The operating timescale of the layout can be varied to cover the 1950s, when it was part of the Southern Region, to the 1960s, when it was part of the Western Region, and early diesel locomotives were beginning to appear.

The branch is served by predominantly local push-pull passenger trains, and a regular freight service coming from a nearby town. The patronage is light in these pre-Beeching days, but it is busy in summer with Holiday makers.

The narrow-gauge line at St Jude’s Bay was built as a light railway to take passengers and freight further along the coast and inland to areas which the main line did not reach. It is now operating as a predominantly tourist attraction which shares and exchanges passenger traffic with the main line.